Breathe: Book I
by tbka
Summary: When you leave your world behind everything changes. When you find yourself alone your strength can falter. Elphaba Thropp is now the Wicked Witch of West; what does the City of Emeralds have in store for her? What lays in her future? -Sequel to Loathing-
1. Chapter One

_**Summary: **When you leave your world behind everything changes. When you find yourself alone your strength can falter. Elphaba Thropp is now the Wicked Witch of West; what does the City of Emeralds have in store for her? What lays in her future? And why has her determination faltered?_

_**Genre: **Romance/Drama_

_**Rating: **T_

_**Author's Note: **This is a sequel to the story "__Loathing: The True Story Behind the Friendship of the Witches of Oz__" but reading that first is probably not necessary. A basic knowledge of the book should be enough. Also, this story is mostly bookverse but there are some elements in it that are from the musical. Just bear with me and hopefully you'll be able to figure it all out. _

_Any similarities to the fanfiction __"Black & White__" by __"__TheWitch'sCat__" are purely coincidental and due only to the fact that that fanfic is absolutely stunningly amazing and I recommend you go read it right now! I don't intend any plagiarism of either TheWitch'sCat nor Gregory Maguire and this is all in good fun._

_--_

**Breathe  
Book I: Of the Emerald City**

--

_He smiled in both sadness and a strange sense of pride. "Goodbye," he whispered to the silent air. "Goodbye Elphaba."_

--

**Chapter One:**

Blood. It came in rivets. Pouring down her skin like the raging river of Suicide Canal. She watched it quietly; was memorized by it. The knife gleamed in the flickering light of the candle as it dug deep into soft, green flesh.

The bar the Witch had chosen smelled of the very filth of the world. The drunken men around her stammered and stumbled as they tried to get a glimpse of the silent woman – the only woman – that sat near them. Every now and then she would let a man take her to the dirty, small bathroom where they would have a chance to feel her strange, sewn-shut body. She never allowed the lights to be on and she never allowed anything more to occur than simple touch but from that touch she managed to scrounge together enough money to buy her the scraps of food she survived on. Every man, every touch, tore away a tiny piece of her soul until there was barely anything left.

Eventually the candle burned out, plugging the table the Witch sat at into darkness. She stared at her arm but she could no longer see the blood that stained her skin. A small part of her – the sentimental part – wanted to cry. She wanted to mourn all the friends she had left behind; all the memories she would never get a chance to make. But she was passed that now – beyond such trivial feelings.

She was part of a higher plan now.

Her name had been stripped from her. Her personality buried in the back of her mind to forever be lost to her. She was a tool now; just a blimp on the radar of the greater plan. A small, almost unseen, piece of the larger puzzled of the revolution.

She was just a child to the ones above her. Untrained and untested. She could not be trusted with anything of importance until she had completed her small tasks of unimportance. She delivered letters to strange addresses in shaded parts of the Emerald City. She hid herself behind thick clothing of black, blues, and grays. She slept beneath bridges, in alleyways, and sometimes in the cellars of houses she managed to sneak in to.

To the revolution her name was Fae. To everyone else her name was the Wicked Witch of the West. Her green skin gave away her identity so she was forced to keep herself covered in dark clothes and stay in the shadows. The men she let feel her for a few coins only ever saw her shrouded in the dark and they were always far too drunk to notice the slight green-tinge of her skin that the darkness did not quite hide.

She was careful of who saw her naked, even in the darkness, for she knew what a disaster it would be if word got out to Oz – if people knew – that the great and terrible Wicked Witch of the West was letting men molest her to make her way through life she would be ruined. Any chance of using her _Wicked_ title in the future to further her cause would be destroyed.

She could not allow that to happen.

She stood up suddenly, grabbing her broom – which was almost completely useless to her now – from its place beside her on the cushioned bench, and left the bar. She stumbled slightly as the few drinks she had had blurred her vision. She gasped at the shock of the cold air that hit her when she left the bar. She reached into her bag – checking to make sure that the Grimmerie still resided there. She calmed at the feeling of the worn leather covering of the ancient magickal book. She pulled down the sleeve of her dark brown dress to cover her wounded arm. The blood still poured from the deep cuts and made her head ache but she pushed away the dread in the pit of her stomach.

The Witch mounted the broom as she hid in the shadows behind the bar. It did not fly. It had not flown for her in months and she feared that she had lost her talent in sorcery. In scared her, to know that she might be failing in the one thing she claimed to have some fame in. What would Oz think if they found out that the Wicked Witch could not even get her broom to fly anymore? The fear that kept people away from her would be gone and she knew that she would be hunted down in a moment if they thought she was no longer capable of performing the sorcery they rumoured her able to do – the sorcery she had never really been that inept at to begin with.

She threw the broom down in anger and sat exactly where she had stood. Her back rested against the outside wall of the bar she had just been in. She laid down, curled in on herself, and pillowed her head in her arm. She fell into a fitful sleep that lasted no longer than three hours. She was jerked awake by a small crash near her – created by a stray cat knocking over a garbage can – and, looking around her, deduced that it was still at least two hours before dawn.

She scowled, let out a sigh of anger, and stood up – hastily grabbing her broom. She wrapped her arms around her shivering and far too thin body and left. She cut a random path through the dark alleyways of the inner workings of the Emerald City in hopes to make it to the place she commonly met her connection to the revolution.

She hated arriving after he did.


	2. Chapter Two

_She hated arriving after he did._

--

**Chapter Two:**

She knew something was wrong the moment she smelled smoke. She turned around to find that the chemicals she had been instructed to mix together were reacting far faster than she had been informed they would. She turned to flee then but she tripped over a fallen book. She fell to the floor and by the time she struggled back up into a standing position the smoke was surrounding her and she could feel the heat of the fire against her back. She didn't spare a glance backwards as she clutched her broom and ran. She had mixed the chemicals in the basement in order to more effectively envelope the building in the burning blue flames but as a result her escape route was far longer than she would have liked it to be.

By the time she had sprinted up the stairs to the first floor the blue fire had begun to eat away at the supporting beams of the building. The floorboards that the Witch ran on trembled beneath her and, had anyone else been running on them, they would have given away. But, unknown to the Witch, her magick kept the burning wood strong beneath her feet and she managed to cross the large building and escape the flame engulfed structure through the back door.

She continued to run; refusing to look behind her and see the results of what she had done. She knew her actions had been for the revolution but she still felt a stab of guilt inside of her. Yes, the library she had set the blue flames on carried the bulk of the Wizard's propaganda books but it had still held a few books that she regretted destroying. However, she had to take her own emotions out of the picture. Emotions made her weak, made her efforts in the revolution futile. She had to choke them out of herself if she hoped to make any difference in Oz.

A hand grabbed her arm and she was brought to a halting stop. She whirled around and ripped her arm free of the hand that held it. "Who are you?" she hissed out.

"It's me, Jay."

The Witch relaxed at the familiar voice of her revolutionist connection. "What?" she asked; not one to waste time on idle chatter.

"I've been instructed to inform you to keep a low profile for the next little while."

"I already keep a low profile."

Jay sighed. "I know," he said. "But those were my instructions. They fear you might have been seen but they are satisfied with your accomplishment."

The Witch leveled an angry glare at the man before her. "How have you heard from them so quickly?"

"That is none of your concern."

"Tell them that the chemicals mixed far faster than they told me they would. And tell them that next time I would like to have accurate information about the substances they want me to work with. I nearly died back there!"

"They will give you accurate information when they believe you have the worth in the revolution for such a thing. You are still just a small cog in the machine and your part can easily be replaced. Until you can offer more to our plan you will not be considered worthy enough of more information."

The Witch scowled. "So be it," she spat out. "If that is all then I shall be going now. Goodbye." Her voice was cold and harsh as she spoke and she darted away in a flurry of dark brown clothing and green skin.

Jay frowned but did not pursue the green-skinned girl. He was one of the few in Oz who did not think of her as the Wicked Witch but as rather a comparable companion striving for the same as he was – equality for all. She rarely spoke and her words were always short and to the point. She was harsh towards him and, had it not been for their shared work in the revolution, he would have cast her aside long ago. But something about her hard exterior made him think that perhaps she was not as strong as she, and Oz, liked to think she was.


	3. Chapter Three

_She was harsh towards him and, had it not been for their shared work in the revolution, he would have cast her aside long ago. But something about her hard exterior made him think that perhaps she was not as strong as she, and Oz, liked to think she was._

--

**Chapter Three:**

She scurried through the dark streets, clutching the shawl she wore tightly around her head, and her eyes darted back and forth. She felt… wrong in a way, as if some great terrible deed was about to occur. She tried to look as inconspicuous as possible but, being green, she found it greatly difficult. She kept her head bowed and did not make eye contact with anyone. She held the Grimmerie close to her body with one hand and kept the shawl in place with the other. She wore her violet gloves – the pair that Glinda had bought for her back in their days at Shiz together – as she always did.

When she reached the unionist chapel in Saint Glinda's Square she hurried inside. It was mostly empty, except for a few people who were far too focused on their prayers to notice her presence. She ducked into a long hallway and made her way to a small room where the water-stained picture of Saint Glinda herself resided. She waited then, in the deadly silence that surrounded her. She did not know how long she stood there – she had long ago given up on counting the passage of time to distract her mind. It drained her, to focus so deeply all the time, and she simply let her mind go blank instead.

"Fae."

The sound of her codename shocked her from her quiet stillness and she immediately straightened, raised her head, and looked forward to stare at the painted picture before her. The room was shrouded in shadows that she knew were there due to the magick that hid the man giving her orders.

"They call you the Wicked Witch. How accomplished are you in sorcery? Truly?"

"It is a façade, " the Witch replied. "I can do no more than the basic."

"Do you have any natural talent?"

"I did, at one point, but I seemed to have lost it after I left Shiz." The Witch's voice shook slightly and her body trembled in both fear and exhaustion.

"Practice. If you can prove yourself to me then perhaps there will be tasks of more importance for you."

The Witch took in a sharp intake of breath as the words spoken to her reminded her of the time she had been asked to prove herself to the Wizard and how much of a disaster that had turned into.

"This worries you?"

The Witch shook her head. "No," she said, willing away her memories. "I will do my best."

"Then you are dismissed," the voice said. "But stay clear of the main streets today. Your feeling of a great disaster should not go unheeded."

The Witch raised her eyebrows in shock – how did he know that she felt so much dread inside of her for today? – but did not question his knowledge. She bowed respectfully before turning to leave. She held the Grimmerie close to her, wondering why she had bothered to bring it in the first place, and quickly left the chapel. It unnerved her to be in a place of such pure religion and goodness when she was the embodiment of wickedness and wronged.

In her haste she forgot the warning to stay away from the main area of the Emerald City. She was so used to using the crowds to hide herself that she had simply fallen back into the habit of going that way to get to the outer rings of the city where she made her money and slept. As a result she found herself, in a moment of pure shock, in the middle of the disaster she had feared from the moment she had awakened. The flames took her by surprise and the loudness of the explosion briefly deafened her. Her vision blurred and she could feel the black dust covering her. When she finally gathered her bearings she found herself on her back, her shawl torn from her, and her vision spinning. She struggled to stand and when she did she looked around to find that the people around her were as confused as she was as to what had occurred.

"The Witch!"

She slowly turned around, dazed and utterly confused, to face the voice that had called her name. Someone was pointing at her, obviously recognizing her green skin, and screaming nonsense about her part in this.

"The Witch did it!"

"Get her!"

"Kill her!"

"Look what she has done! She's a monster!"

The crowd swarmed her and the Witch, still unable to gather her bearings properly, began to panic. The closeness of the large, angry crowd suffocated her and her breaths came in ragged gasps. She clutched the Grimmerie close to her and closed her eyes – trying to will away the people around her.

It was the heat that frightened her the most. When she opened her eyes to see the flames that were burning the buildings to the ground she nearly cried out in horror. Then the hands of the crowd were on her; striking her, hitting her, breaking skin and causing the blood to flow freely. They screamed at her – frantic and disgusted and desperate to find someone to blame this disaster on.

The Witch shrieked and her magick seemed to pour from her. The crowd was shoved back from the force of it and she stood there, panting and bloody and her eyes shining with hate for them all. She stared at them and, in a moment of pure malice, sent them flying with a sweep of her arm. The magick burned within her and made her utterly powerful. She fell to her knees and searched the Grimmerie – desperate for a spell to stop the flames around them. She chanted, the words flowing from her like a well-sung song, and the weather abruptly changed.

Then she ran. She ran as fast as she could as the rain began to pelt down around them. She ducked into the shadows of the alleyways and fled as only she could. She did not slow until she reached the outer circle of the city where she collapsed against an aging building. She was exhausted, physically drained, and her head ached. She wiped away the blood from her split lip with the back of her gloved hand. Her breaths came in deep, desperate gasps as she tried to make sense of what had just occurred.

Then it struck her – the terrible mistake she had made. She had stopped the flames, she had stopped the disaster, and the disaster had been caused by the revolution. She had stopped the very work she was supposed to be doing. She hadn't meant to but the flames had been so big and the screams of pain around her had choked her thoughts. Too many people were hurt by that – too many people were dying from the flames – she had had to stop them. But now she feared she had crushed her chances in the revolution.

And one does not simply walk away from the revolution. She had seen many people, many of her own connections, killed for trying to get out of the revolutionist work they were all so deeply involved in. They knew too much, they all did. Even the ones like her, the ones on the edge, still knew too much to be allowed to leave. It was a consequence she was well aware of; death to the abandoners.

That night she spent in the shadows of a bar; drowning her memories in whiskey and letting the men around her feel her body for a coin or two.


	4. Chapter Four

_That night she spent in the shadows of a bar; drowning her memories in whiskey and letting the men around her feel her body for a coin or two._

--

**Chapter Four:**

The mind was a remarkable thing. It could hide away its painful memories to shelter itself from insanity. It could force itself to forget, for a time, the horror it had suffered through. It could shrink in on itself and build a wall of stone to push away the outside world.

But it all came with a price. The price of personality. The price of feelings. The price of any memories at all. It was a startling revelation that shocked the Witch into complete stillness. The drink she held in her shaking hand slipped from her grasp and shattered against the bar table. She closed her eyes, willed away her tears, and tried to block away the revelation that had just come to her. She wanted the blissful experience of empty emotions. She wanted the coldness she had created within herself to come back. But it was gone.

So she ordered another drink.

The whiskey poured down her throat with a frightful speed. She swallowed glass after glass until the waitress herself refused to serve the Witch anymore. She stood up then, forgetting the broom and her bag that contained the Grimmerie on the seat next to her, and stumbled out of the bar. She did not notice the men that followed her or their drunken rants as they spoke in barely concealed whispers. She did not even register their presence until it was far too late.

One of them grabbed her arm and flung her to the ground. She cried out, first in shock and then in panic. By the time her foggy mind could register what had happened there was little she could do. Her blurred vision deciphered the shadowed forms of five drunken, slurring, stumbling men.

"She's sewn shut!" One of them spat out. "We have to cut her open!" He waved a knife around dangerously in drunken stupidity.

Another man grabbed the knife from him. "Let me do it," he slurred out. "I the sober… sober… soberest of us all!"

A man pinned the Witch's arms down and another sat on her stomach to keep her still. She felt her dress being thrown up to bunch around her waist and her undergarments being torn from her. The cold air touched her now naked skin and made her shiver. Fear made her body tremble.

She screamed for help; her voice a blood-curdling high pitch full of despair and terrible pain. The knife was shoved into the small whole that remained from her University circumcision and dragged upwards. It split her open, revealing the womanly body that laid underneath. But the drunk man could not judge the distance properly and the knife began to dig into skin that had never been opened to the world to begin with. The Witch cried out and tossed her head wildly, trying to stop the man and free herself. The pain made her head spin and her throat was clogged with her own screams.

No one came to help her.

She knew her cries for help could be heard by the people in the busy streets nearby and by the men in the bar she had just exited. But no one offered their assistance. No one came to stop this brutal mutilation of her already mutilated body.

The man threw the knife away and, with the Witch's body now opened again, pulled down his pants and mounted her. He pushed into her and the Witch screams became even louder in pain and despair. She shrieked nonsense to scare them away but the men would not be frightened by her. For all her mental strength and magickal powers her body was simply too frail to fight off the men.

The five men took their turns pinning her down and taking her body for their own – not realizing that they were raping the famed Wicked Witch of the West. When they were done they tossed her into the darkness of the back alleyway behind the bar and left her in a crumpled heap of blood and stinking fluid. She laid there, unmoving, for quite some time until her vision stopped spinning and the ache in her head lessened enough that she could form some sort of coherent thought again. When the reality of what had happened began to register through the haze of whiskey that still surrounded her she was forced to roll on to her side as the meager contents of her stomach were forced from her.

She used the building's wall to help her stand. Her legs shook and her body ached. The pain seemed to course through her and she struggled to keep herself upright. In time she managed to will herself to walk and though her legs trembled she found herself strong enough to stay upright. She stumbled down the alleyway for over an hour before she collapsed to her knees. She found herself behind yet another bar – this one she knew was a basement bar with the owner living upstairs. She crawled towards one of the ground level windows and chanted a whispered spell. The glass cracked and then turned into dust as the spell allowed her entrance into the now closed bar. She pulled herself into the basement of the house and, quite unceremoniously, tumbled to the floor. She made her way to the abandoned bar and, throwing a few coins that still remained within the hidden pocket of her dress on the bar top, grabbed a bottle of scotch and simply smashed the top opened on the edge of the shelf. She drank it straight from the bottle, broken glass and all, and nearly downed half the bottle in one gulp.

The sound of a gun being drawn drew her attention. She slowly turned around to face the opening of the stairs that led upstairs to find an older man – her drunkenness prevented her from discerning any details – standing on the last step with a small gun held in his hand. It was pointed directly at her.

"You're the Witch," he said in shock.

The Witch pointed at the pile of coins she had left. "I paid for it," she slurred out. "I not stealing!"

"You're drunk."

"Really?" She feigned shock.

"I could turn you in right now, you could not fight me in your present condition."

"You could kill me too."

"I could."

The Witch stumbled towards him and as she did the man noticed the blood that dripped from her and stained the floor. "I dare you to." She caught sight of him looking at the blood. She cackled. "I ain't so frightening when I'm bleeding, am I? Not so scary when I cannot even stop a group of blubbering, drunken men from raping me, am I?" She laughed again. "Shoot me! I dare you to! I beg you to!"

"What do you want from me?"

"Nothing!" she shrieked. "Nothing and everything! I am no great sorceress! Kill me now! I cannot stop you! You'd be famous!"

"You're insane."

"Not insane! Just bloody and beaten and screwed! Just used and broken and tossed away!" She stopped, leaving a few feet between herself and the man. She smiled at him – a sick, twisted, saddened smirk that seemed to make her green skin sallow with despair. "If you knew the wrongs done to me you would not be pointing that gun at me."

"You could be witching me right now."

"I cannot even make my broom fly! I have no powers! The Wizard lies but no one sees that!"

"You caused the fire in the city center. You burnt those buildings to the ground."

"It was the revolutionist's work but it was not me! I take no credit! I was simply trying to go home!"

"You lie!"

"If you believe that you would have no problem killing me!"

He tilted his head and lowered the gun her held. "You truly were raped?"

"Why else would I bleed!"

He turned the gun around in his hand as he slowly approached her. Before the Witch even realized what was happening the blunt end of the gun struck against her skull. She heard the audible crack echoing in her ears before her vision swam and she collapsed, unconscious, to the cracked wooden floor.


	5. Chapter Five

_**Author's Note: **This story gets pretty dark for the next few chapters and since the next series of chapters are all pretty short I decided to upload them all at once. Also, the story does get less depressing eventually, just bear with me for this next little bit, okay?_

--

_She heard the audible crack echoing in her ears before her vision swam and she collapsed, unconscious, to the cracked wooden floor._

--

**Chapter Five:**

The Witch awoke to the man with the gun on top of her – inside of her. She screamed in horror and terror and pushed the man off of her. She vaulted out of the bed and tried to run for the door but he grabbed her and threw her back on the bed. The Witch, for all her determination, was not near strong enough to escape the large man's grasp.

He was on top of her again. Finding pleasure in taking more from the green Witch then he deserved. When he was done he quickly left the room – leaving the dazed, hung-over, and confused Witch on the bed. She felt the man's fluids drying, sticky and thick, on her thighs.

Exhaustion, blood loss, and shame overtook her body and she fell unconscious.

When she awoke next she was unsure of the time or the day – the room was despairingly dark. She dragged herself from the bed and smoothed out her crumpled and stained dress as well as she could. She made for the door but when she tried to open it she found it locked. Panic grew within her and she whirled around to find that no window occupied the room. The coldness of the air around her finally registered in her brain and the smell of slightly damp wood reached her nose – she was in a small, underground room. She turned back to the door. Ran her hands along the frame but she could find no weakness in its build to pry it open with. She tried the doorknob to find that it was locked just the same as it had been moments earlier.

She banged on the door until the sound caused her head to throb. She clawed at the doorframe until her fingernails were torn and bloody. She screamed for help until her throat was hoarse and her voice gone. Eventually she realized that no one was going to save her. Eventually she realized that no hero was going to come to her aid.

She collapsed against the door in despair and exhaustion. She hugged her knees to her chest as the reality of what was happening finally began to sink in.

She was a slave; trapped within this locked, underground room to be nothing but an object. A body to offer carnal pleasure to the man that had taken her for his own. Her greatest fear had come true.

She had lost control of who she offered her body too.

Hours later, with the Witch now lying listless on the bed, the door was unlocked and opened. There, standing in the doorway, was the very man who had so cruelly imprisoned the Witch and used her for his own pleasure.

"I daresay you recognize what has happened by now," he stated; his tone flat and void of any emotion.

The Witch turned her head ever-so-slightly to face the man. He held his gun in a limp grasp. "You have taken me for your own," she said; her eyes dull and her voice matching the same flat tone that the man's voice carried.

"You have teased the men at the bars for far too long," he said. "You must have known this day would come… that someone would force you to give to us what we have all desired for so very long."

"Do you know who I am?"

The man laughed; the sound short and cruel. "You are the Wicked Witch," he said. "It's been rumoured that you were but now that I see your skin in the light of sobriety it is clear that you are. Think of the clients I will get when the men on the street hear that I have the Witch for their pleasurable use."

The Witch closed her eyes, turned her head so as not to face the man that was now her captor. "The novelty of fucking the green Witch will soon wear off," she whispered. "Then what will you do with me?"

"Cast you away like the trash you are."

With those words the door was shut and locked. The Witch choked back her sobs and forced herself not to cry. She was an adult now and there was no longer any room in her life for tears. She had shed her tears at Shiz and now the pain the salty water brought her was unbearable and unnecessary. Tears meant you were hurting and you had to have emotions, feelings, to hurt.

The Witch had lost her feelings the moment she had lost her birth name.


	6. Chapter Six

_The Witch had lost her feelings the moment she had lost her birth name._

--

**Chapter Six:**

Hours turned into days. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. In time she learned of her captor's name – Letozay – and he forced her to address him as such. She did her duty and learned to block out the men that paid for her services at night. In the windowless room her only sense of time came from when the men entered her room and she used that to the best of her ability to keep the days in order and her mind from spinning with the severe inability to judge the passage of time properly.

Each man that took her dug a small scar into an inner thigh. It was a mark, to tell the other men, how many times she had been used. The more scars she had the less worth she carried and the more men she had to take to make Letozay the same profit. It was a cruel circle of torment – more men made more scars which required more men. It was a circle that spun and spun and spun and left the Witch in a dizzy haze of despair and shame.

She had never scarred herself below her stomach – all her self-inflicted injuries had occurred above her naval – and to have the scars below made her feel disgusting. She tried to pretend they were not there but a new one was cut into her nearly every night and made her skin sting. They were small but they were there and they hurt – in more ways than just physical.

In time she could no longer remember how she had lived her life outside of the house of Letozay. She could not comprehend how she had survived without his food or his roof above her head. When it rained she could hear it, and it made her tremble. The darkness of the room was suffocating and her claustrophobia was constant. Her father's torment had ingrained that fear into her and even after all her time in the locked room she could not shake that fear from herself.

Every night, without fail or respite, a paying customer was sent to her room. At first the Witch had fought them but in time her will and strength left her and she simply laid still as the men took her body for their own pleasure. There were no rules set out by Letozay save that she was left alive at the end of the night with no permanent damage. It gave the men free reign over her body and the majority of them abused that. Seeking to find power within themselves by experimenting on the trapped Witch and using her body to live out there darkest fantasies.

It was those men, who shoved themselves into the orifice of her body never meant to take a man's membrane inside of it, that made the Witch vomit afterwards. It was those men that could still cause her to tear and bleed and shake her to her very core.

She took the men in silence and with no struggle. Time dragged on until a year passed by. Letozay and his men had their fun each night and the Witch kept her silence. Her strength seemed to be drained right out of her and her will and determination had been stolen from her grasp. She desperately strived for freedom but she was terrified of the world outside of the locked door.

One night, later than usual, the Witch heard the lock sliding free and her body instinctively stiffened with the torment she knew would soon be upon her. But when the door opened it was Letozay and he made no move to approach her, to use her. The Witch sat up slowly, clutching the tattered bedding around her naked form, and stared at him.

"You have served me well, what do you want in return?"

The Witch stared at him in shock. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she could gather her thoughts. She blurted out the first thing that came to her mind; "A room with a window."

He cocked his head slightly and smiled, almost cruelly, at her. "Very well," he said. "A room with a window it is." The door was then shut behind him and locked securely.

The Witch cursed herself for not asking for freedom.


	7. Chapter Seven

_The Witch cursed herself for not asking for freedom._

--

**Chapter Seven:**

The new room was on the second floor of the house. Its door was secured just the same as the basement room's door had been and the window had heavy metal bars across it to prevent her from escaping. Not that she would try; she would die from the fall.

She could open the window. The fresh air seemed to enlighten her spirits slightly and a small bubble of hope and happiness developed within her – she quickly forced it away though. The bed's mattress was a tad more comfortable and there was no spring that dug into her back like the old one had. There was a small water basin in the corner, just had there had been in the basement room, but she had not yet used it. She had rarely used the old one as the water burnt her terribly and left a sting on her skin that remained for days. But she had used it when she had to – when the blood and the fluid would not be removed by cloth alone.

The men continued to come. Every night a new one, sometimes an old one would return, paid for a moment or two with her body. On, what the Witch believed was her three hundredth and seventy ninth day of captivity, the door was opened at night to reveal a woman. The Witch frowned and wrapped her sheets tightly around her body.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Witch asked. Her voice was quiet and hoarse from the lack of words she had spoken in the last year.

"I am a paying customer," the woman responded, taking a step into the room.

The Witch shot out of the bed, a look of horror plastered on her face, and bolted from the room. The woman was so shocked that she could not react fast enough to secure the Witch in the room. The green woman took the stairs two at a time but as she reached the bottom she ran right into Letozay. "I cannot do this!" she screamed as she tried to find her way around her captor but he would not let the Witch escape.

"She is a paying customer," Letozay said as he practically dragged the struggling green form back up the stairs. "You will do as she asks."

"She is a woman!"

"It does not matter!" Letozay threw the Witch back on her bed and, using his belt, secured her wrists to the head board. He was furious at the way she had reacted. He turned to address the paying woman. "Do as you wish. Ignore her struggling she has simply never had a woman customer before. You are her first."

The customer shrugged with a small smile. "I ain't minding the struggling," she said with a laugh. "In fact, it makes it far more enjoyable to watch them squirm."

Letozay nodded his understanding and left then; leaving the terrified Witch alone with the paying woman. He was angry with the Witch for trying to escape and he would give the green woman his own punishment later. But for now the paying woman wanted her fun and Letozay was all too happy to leave her to it.

"This is wrong," the Witch spat out. Her anger was growing within her. It was the most emotion she had felt in a very long time.

"Hush now," the woman whispered as she shed her clothes and crawled onto the naked, strapped down green Witch. "I'm going to show you what real pleasure is.

Then the woman had her way with the horrified and disgusted Witch.


	8. Chapter Eight

_Then the woman had her way with the horrified and disgusted Witch._

--

**Chapter Eight:**

The Witch laid in the corner of her small room. She had assumed the fetal position and had not untangled herself form the protection it provided her for days. Letozay had sent many paying men to her but she could not be taken advantage of by any of them. He was forced to pay the men back and the loss of his profit greatly angered him.

Letozay threw the door open and stormed his way towards the naked, shivering green form in the corner. The Witch did not acknowledge his presence even as he grabbed her wrist and tried to stand her up. She refused to be moved and for all the strength that Letozay had it seemed that he could not, for some strange reason, move the Witch in any way. So he let go of her wrist and grabbed the water basin – unaware of the Witch's strange reaction to the clear liquid. He dumped the contents of it on top of the green woman – hoping the cold water would shock the Witch into movement.

She screamed.

The Witch shot up into a standing position, knocking the now empty basin from Letozay's hands, and bolted for the bed. She ripped the sheets from it and desperately dabbed at her face and body. It was a frantic action that the Witch knew was useless even as she did it. The water had already burnt her naked, green skin and the bedding did little to dry up the liquid.

Letozay stood back in disbelief as the sheet fell from the Witch's grasp. The green woman collapsed to her knees, hugging her arms around herself protectively, and tried to ignore the pain that now coursed across her skin.

"Water burns you?" Letozay asked; his voice quiet and shaking in his shock.

The Witch made no response as she focused only on not crying. The tears she dearly wished to spill over the pain she was feeling would only bring her even more pain. She could not let that happen.

Letozay shook his head slightly to regain his composure. "You have three days," he said. "After that you will start taking customers again. If you refuse then, well, now I know what causes you the most pain."

The Witch turned her head sharply and laid a cold glare on Letozay. "You wouldn't…"

"Don't think I won't." Letozay smiled in amusement at his own plan. "If you think that water was your enemy before than think again. If you disobey me you will feel the true pain that water can bring you."

Then he was gone; leaving the trembling Witch alone with her terrible pain. The green woman shakily stood up, leaning on the bed frame to keep herself from falling. She was forced to keep her eyes tightly shut to prevent her tears from spilling, unchecked, from her eyes and burning her even more. She tripped over the empty basin that Letozay had left in the room. She fell to the floor, her burnt skin pulling painfully. She cried out but then clamped her mouth shut. She would not allow Letozay to hear her voice in pain. Such a weakness could not be allowed.

She laid still and silent on the floor until her burnt skin caused her so much horrible pain that she fell into the blissful escape of unconsciousness.


	9. Chapter Nine

_She laid still and silent on the floor until her burnt skin caused her so much horrible pain that she fell into the blissful escape of unconsciousness._

--

**Chapter Nine:**

She woke up with the feeling that something was horribly wrong. She threw back her sheets to find blood covering her thighs and soaking the bed. Panic surged through her as her mind flashed back to her time in Shiz when such an event had been directly due to the torturous actions of Avaric and his cruel knife.

The Witch took a few deep breaths to calm herself as she slowly came to realize that nothing was wrong. She was simply bleeding as any woman does.

She stood up and made her way, slowly due to her still burnt skin, to the door. It was locked – as always – so she knocked continuously until Letozay finally made his way upstairs and threw the door opened. "What?" he spat out, annoyed at the Witch interrupting him.

"It seems that it is once again the time for my body to assert the fact that I am a woman," the Witch muttered, keeping her eyes trained on the ground.

Letozay frowned. "Disgusting."

"I cannot control it."

"I am tired of allowing this. You will no longer receive clean sheets or clothes when this happens."

The Witch's eyes widened in shock as she looked up at Letozay in horror. "I can do nothing to stop it!" she exclaimed.

"I've heard of whores so thin that such womanly trivialities no longer afflict them," Letozay said with a small shrug. "I suggest you learn from that or spend these womanly times in your own filth and blood."

"But –"

"You will have a customer tonight," he interrupted her, "and you will service him, womanly blood or not." He slammed the door shut, leaving the Witch alone and bleeding with nothing to get her through the next few days.

When the paying customer arrived that night the Witch laid still and silent on the blood-stained bed. She could not look the man in the eyes due to her unbearable shame and embarrassment. Embarrassment over the fact that not only was she a whore but that she could do nothing to hide or control her bleeding.


	10. Chapter Ten

_Embarrassment over the fact that not only was she a whore but that she could do nothing to hide or control her bleeding._

--

**Chapter Ten:**

The next time the Witch's body was due to bleed and show the world that the green woman was, in fact, a woman, no blood came. Letozay had restricted the amount of food the Witch received and as a result the already thin woman had slowly become gaunt.

Naked she was now no more than sallow green skin stretched over weak bones. Her lack of food had caused what little feminine curves the Witch had remaining to all but disappear. It was a sacrifice that Letozay mourned but had made willingly. The loss of the Witch's breasts had caused a few regular customers to stop coming but the loss of profit was minor. And to Letozay the disappearance of the disgusting woman triviality was enough to cover the money he had lost from the departure of the few regulars.

Time trudged on; dragging the ever thinner Witch along with it. Soon one year turned into two and the green woman lost track of the days that passed her by and the number of men – and woman – who had used her green body for their own primal pleasures. When she laid in her bed at night, after the paying customers had left, she would vaguely remember a time in her life when she had not been alone.

Sometimes the memories of Shiz – of Glinda and Fiyero – struck her so fast and so hard that she would almost cry.

She tried to remember how she had live before Letozay; how she had survived without his roof over her head or his food on her plate. She couldn't. She couldn't remember what she had done to keep herself alive. She couldn't remember where she had slept or how she had gotten food. She thought that if she could just remember how she had survived before Letozay that she would be able to find the strength to flee this place and live free of Letozay and his men.

The days turned into weeks and soon winter, and Lurlinemas, was upon the Emerald City. The Witch would curl up on the tiny ledge of her window and watch the snow fall. She found solace in watching the people walking along below her. She imagined where they were going or coming from. The Witch would create stories in her head about the people she saw to alleviate her boredom.

The night of Lurlinemas found the Witch curled up, naked as she always was, on the window sill. For the first night in what seemed like forever the green woman had a full night alone. No paying men to tear into her. Not even Letozay wanted her body this night.

It made her feel even more useless, even more like garbage, than she normally did.

The lone candle in the room flickered – sending strange shadows dancing about. The green woman sighed heavily – absentmindedly tracing green fingers over the cruel words scarred into her skin. She had never been one to celebrate Lurlinemas but tonight she wished she did.

Or rather, she wished she had someone to celebrate _with_.

Something caught her eye; a dress outside her window that seemed to reflect the pale moonlight. The Witch focused her wandering gaze on the wearer of the dress. Pale skin. Blue eyes. Small nose. Thin lips. Blonde curls.

Glinda.

The realization made the Witch inhale sharply in shock and grief. She could not believe that she sat a few feet away and a story above her old roommate. If Glinda were to look up and squint slightly through the snow she would see her old green friend looking down on her.

But Glinda didn't.

In a mere moment the blonde was gone – disappearing around a corner and out of sight. In her absence the Witch let out the breath she had not realized she was holding.

Then the tears came. Hot and fresh and so incredibly painful. The Witch stumbled to her bed – blinded by her grief – and grabbed a stained sheet. Frantically she dabbed at the burning wetness but it was a useless attempt. Her grief was simply too strong for her to will the tears away. Her pain was fueled by the onslaught of memories that the sight of Glinda had dredged up in her mind.

She hated herself for her weakness.


	11. Chapter Eleven

_She hated herself for her weakness._

--

**Chapter Eleven:**

Two days after seeing Glinda the Witch laid eyes on a man she had not expected. A man she had hoped to never see again.

He pinned her naked, weak body against the dirty bed. Forced himself into her. She struggled to escape for the first time in months. Long ago the Witch had given up in her futile attempts to escape the torment of Letozay's paying customers but this man she could not let take her without a struggle. If he wanted her body he was going to have to fight for it.

When he was done he kept himself straddled on top of the Witch to keep the green woman still. He traced long fingers over the scars on her stomach. The words the Witch had marked herself with and the large, deep scar that cut them in half and ran down to her very womanhood.

"I remember the day I gave you this scar," the man said as he traced the large scar. "You were drunk yet you still screamed out in pain when I shoved that knife into you."

The Witch's eyes were shut now; her cheeks darker than usual in her embarrassment. "How did you find me?" she asked quietly.

"How many green Witch whores do you think there are in Oz?" he replied with a short, cruel laugh.

"What do you find so funny?" The Witch's body was tense beneath the man's touch.

"I only used you as a whore at Shiz," he explained. "I never thought you would actually become one."

"Fate has never been kind to me."

"You use fate as an excuse… you always have."

"What? Are you my shrink now?" The Witch's voice was curt – her patience with the man becoming shorter with each passing moment. "Forgive me, _Avaric_, for not taking your words of advice to heart."

"I came here to apologize for what I did back at Shiz," he replied.

"You fuck me than apologize?" the Witch asked in shock and disbelief. "You rape me than apologize for the times you raped me at Shiz? What is the meaning of this?"

"I was just a horny kid back then," he said. "What I did was wrong and inexcusable."

"And this isn't?" the Witch shrieked; opening her eyes and finally looking at Avaric.

"This is different."

"How!"

"I paid for you. Paid for what you're selling just like all the other men before me have." He traced the scars on her thighs, the ones telling the world how many men had used her. There were so many now that the men who paid for her body no longer scarred her – it was a moot practice now.

"So paying _another man_ for free reign over _my_ body suddenly makes it all okay?" the Witch's voice was loud – full of anger, pain, and utter fury.

"You became the whore so yes… yes it does."

"If I had the strength I would kill you right now." The Witch's voice fell to a whisper.

"But you don't."

"No be… because I am nothing but a whore."

"Yes, because you're a whore." Then he took her again. When he was done he threw her to the ground and disappeared. Leaving the Witch in a pool of his fluid and the blood he had torn from her with his force.


	12. Chapter Twelve

"_Yes, because you're a whore." Then he took her again. When he was done he threw her to the ground and disappeared. Leaving the Witch in a pool of his fluid and the blood he had torn from her with his force._

--

**Chapter Twelve:**

Nearly a month later the Witch was awoken by a familiar ball of white fur. She rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up to find herself staring at a cat – or was it a Cat? – sitting at the foot of her bed.

"Elphaba?"

The use of her name startled the Witch and made fear spike in her. "Don't say my name!" she hissed out – afraid of the memories it would bring crashing down on her.

The Cat cocked his head slightly and looked at her in concern. "Then what should I call you?" he asked quietly.

"Fae," the Witch spat out distractedly as she stood up, wrapping her thin sheet around her frail, naked body. "How did you find me?"

"I told you I'd be around."

She began to pace. "You shouldn't be here Malky," she muttered. "I don't want you here."

"Why?"

The Witch spun around to face the Cat. "I don't want to remember!" she shrieked and then her face twisted into an expression of utter terror as she realized that Letozay may have heard her. She couldn't allow him to know that Malky was here – he would surely kill the Cat if he saw him.

"You're agitated."

The Witch sat herself down on the edge of her bed and stayed silent for a few minutes. When she heard no sound of footsteps upon the stairs she relaxed slightly and managed to form some sort of coherent sentence. "I'm ruined," she whispered.

"No."

"I'm a slave."

"I gathered that from the bars on your window."

"I've failed."

"Not yet."

"I'm reduced to nothing more than a whore! An object! A… a slave!"

"You can break free of this." Malky moved himself on to the Witch's lap and curled up to keep warm.

"No I can't," the Witch replied as she absentmindedly began to pet the Cat. The action was repetitive and soothing.

"You need to trust in your own strength."

"What strength?"

"The strength you've always had. The strength that keeps you getting up every morning. The strength that has kept you trudging along even after all you have suffered through."

"I wasn't able to make the broom fly for me."

Malky raised questioning eyes towards the Witch. "Truly?"

"Truly. After… after Shiz… after the Wizard announced my wickedness to Oz everything seemed to just… fade away. For awhile I could fly, for awhile I could read the spells in the Grimmerie with ease, but in time I just… couldn't. It scared me."

"I wonder why."

"I have nothing –" The Witch's words fell silent as loud footsteps echoed throughout the house. Malky, suddenly afraid, jumped from the Witch's lap and hid himself as best as he could underneath the rickety bed frame.

The door was unlocked and thrown open to reveal a very angry Letozay. "Who are you talking to?" he screamed.

The Witch shrunk backwards and dropped her gaze to the floor. "I'm talking to no one," she muttered.

He struck her. The force of his backhand bruised her cheek and split her lip. "You lie!" He grabbed her arm and yanked her off the bed, throwing her against the wall. "Where is this person you speak too!"

"There's no one!" the Witch shrieked. "Who could get in here anyways? You have me locked up in here like some trapped animal! The only company I've had for two years is you and your sick men!"

"Shut-up whore!" He struck her again and the Witch, weak as she was, fell to her knees. He dug the heel of his foot into her back and she cried out in pain. "Who were you talking to!" he screamed again. "Who!"

Malky meowed. Letozay froze. The man turned his attention from the naked, trembling Witch on the floor to the Cat that had crawled out from underneath the bed. Malky meowed again and did his best to act as much like a simple cat – and not a Cat – as he could.

"How did that cat get in here?" Letozay asked; his voice low and dangerous.

"The window," the Witch whispered.

Letozay grabbed a green arm and hoisted the Witch up. He threw her against the bed. He grabbed Malky – unaware that he was a Cat – by the scruff of the neck and threw him out the door. He slammed the window shut and locked it. He turned his attention back the green Witch lying, naked, on the bed.

He raped her. When he was done he spat on her, the saliva burning her thigh where it landed, and left. Malky snuck back inside of the room just before Letozay closed and locked the door behind him.

"Trust in your own strength," Malky whispered as he curled up beside the Witch's head. She raised a hand to pet his soft fur to try and calm herself down. "Trust in yourself and you'll be able to flee this place."

"He has me trapped," the Witch muttered. "I'm the Wicked Witch of the West and I cannot even leave this room."


	13. Chapter Thirteen

"_He has me trapped," the Witch muttered. "I'm the Wicked Witch of the West and I cannot even leave this room."_

--

**Chapter Thirteen:**

Day seven hundred and sixty-five found the Witch pacing in agitation and nervousness. She had put on her only dress – a tattered sack-shape made of dirty gray fabric – for the first time in months beyond her ability to count. She kept glancing at the locked and secured door as if she was waiting for something. Letozay had left hours ago, she had heard him leave and saw him walking down the street through her bar-sealed door, and now she waited with baited breath.

Malky had convinced her to go through with this shaky and terrifying plan. It was simple enough; the Cat would sneak his way in through a window downstairs that Letozay apparently often left opened and then find a way to unlock the door that held the Witch captive. It was so simple that, if the Witch could, she would laugh at the absurdness of it. How could it possibly work? But Malky seemed so very confident in it that the Witch could not find the heart within herself to not even try – at least for the Cat's sake.

So she waited. And waited. And waited. The minutes turned into hours and soon high-noon was upon the Emerald City. The sun shone in through the window, highlighting the Witch's green skin and warming the room up considerably. The Witch continued to pace, wringing her hands together in her old habit that reminded her far too much of her University days.

Then she heard it; the meow from the other side of the door. The Witch froze and laid wide, frightened eyes on the door that had held her back from the world for so very long. She heard noises – the voice of another person – and then the sound of locks being picked opened and finally the door being forced opened against its hinges. It swung open with far too much force and left a dent in the wall from where it hit.

On the other side stood Malky and the Witch's old revolutionist's connection – Jay. He stared at her in shock; seeing her not only for the first time in over two years but also for the first time in the daylight.

"I see you're still alive," the Witch said. Jay nodded. "So the Cat dragged you into this?"

"He did," Jay replied, still trying to get over his shock at how _green_ the Witch's skin really was.

"Letozay will murder you the moment he finds out you were here without paying him."

Jay's mouth opened slightly in surprise. "Payment? He… you… are you…"

"Don't," the Witch hissed out. She moved to leave his presence but he grabbed her wrist. She yanked her arm free of his grasp. "Don't say it!" she snapped out before fleeing down the nearby stairs.

She paused when she reached the bottom and simply stared at the space around her. She found herself in a main sitting room and the space around her was both welcoming and utterly terrifying. She heard Jay and Malky coming down the stairs behind her and she had the sudden urge to find the room she had first been held in. She didn't know why she needed to see its presence but she just knew that she _had_ to. So she tore through the house – flinging doors opened with an anger she had not felt since Avaric had paid Letozay for a night with her. When she found the stairs that led downstairs she quickly made her way down them. When she reached the bottom her instinctive claustrophobia made her temporarily frozen in fear before she could force herself to move again. She muttered a few words that she remembered from her sorcery classes with Madame Morrible and the oil lamps in the basement flickered to life; she was surrounded by a bar. The smell of the alcohol and filth was overwhelming and she had to swallow back the bile tickling her throat. She spotted a hallway near the back and she quickly made her way towards it. When she reached the end of it she stood before a door that she had the sinking feeling was the door she was so desperately searching for.

Her hand shook as she held the doorknob. She heard Jay and Malky approaching her but they stopped a respectable distance away. They seemed to understand, to some extent, that she needed some semblance of privacy as she faced this horrible ordeal that had been her life for so long.

The door swung open and the Witch stared into the very familiar room she had occupied for just over a year. The bed was still the same and the room had not changed in any way. The Witch felt sick at the realization that she had only been a few feet away from the bar – a few feet away from a collection of men that just maybe, just one, would have had the heart to help her.

She screamed. The sound was inhumane and completely animalistic in every way. She wanted it to end – everything. She wanted the pain to go away. She wanted the memories to disappear.

_She_ wanted to disappear.

The Witch turned and fled from the room and the bar; taking the stairs two at a time in her desperate need to be free of this prison of a building. She came to a screeching halt when she reached the main floor as she laid eyes on Letozay. Her captor's face twisted into an expression of surprise at seeing her not in her room and then morphed into an expression of complete fury.

"What are you doing!" he screamed. He grabbed her arm and flung her against the table in the kitchen. Her back hit the edge of the hard wood and she gasped as the pain shot through her spine and she fell to her knees. Letozay tangled his hand in her hair and yanked her forward. She tried to shuffle forwards so that his assault on her was not so painful but the injury to her spine hampered her movements. He forcefully pulled her back to her feet and her vision spun slightly. His backhand sent her back to the floor and she stayed there, on her hands and knees, panting for air and trying to calm down her racing heart.

He placed his foot on her already sore back and pushed down with all his body weight – forcing the Witch on to her stomach. He pulled her dress up to her waist and she heard the sound of his pants being pulled down as he made to rape her.

His assault did not come.

The Witch heard the sounds of a fight occurring around her; screaming and ranting and angry voices to match the physical blows. She curled up into herself and tried to block out the memories of her many fights with her father as a child that all the yelling brought back to her. The chaos around her seemed to last for hours and hours but the Witch knew, logically, that it could not have been longer than a few minutes.

When silence fell around her she finally opened her eyes to find herself alone in the kitchen. She slowly sat up, focusing on taking in deep breaths to calm herself and help to gather her thoughts. Jay found her then, sitting cross-legged on the cracked tiled floor. She looked up at him for only a moment before turning her head to stare at the wall across from her.

"Where is he?" she asked; her voice choked and barely audible.

"I did not kill him," Jay said as he held out a small, blood-stained kitchen knife towards her. "I left that choice up to you."

The Witch turned her head back to Jay and stared at the knife he held. After a few long minutes she eventually took the knife and held it in a shaking grasp. She stared at if for even longer before taking Jay's offered hand and letting him help her stand up. He nodded towards the main sitting room just off the kitchen and the Witch slowly made her way towards there. When she entered she found Letozay laying, half conscious and bloody from his knife-wounds, in a crumpled heap on the floor. She ignored the disaster of a room that surrounded her and focused only on her captor as he laid weak and unable to defend himself just as she had so many times on the dirty bed upstairs. She kneeled down beside him and placed the knife against his throat. The pressure caused a thin red line of blood to bubble up around it.

The Witch could not do it. Even after all the injustice the man had caused her the Witch simply could not bring herself to kill him.

"The choice isn't mine," she muttered quietly. "Who am I to judge who deserves to live and who does not?" She let the knife slip from her grasp and it slid across Letozay's neck to fall against the floor. It left a small red line on his neck, a tiny wound that would surely scar, but he would not die.

She stood up and stared down at him; reveling in the power of being the one in control for once. Letozay opened his mouth to curse her, to tell the Witch she would never be anything more than the whore she was, but he could not find his voice. So the Witch simply spat on him, as he and all the men had so often done to her, and ran.

She grabbed the long winter cloak that Letozay had left by the door as she fled. She shrugged it on and kept her head ducked to try and hide her green skin as she ran through the back streets of the outer ring of the Emerald City. She ran until her chest hurt and she could not catch her breath. She ran until her back ached and her vision span. She ran until she tripped over a broken brick in the alleyway and she tumbled to the ground. She stayed there, on her hands and knees, for quite some time until she finally began to register what had happened.

The Witch panicked. She raised her head and the space around her overwhelmed her. The fresh air seemed to burn her lungs. It had been so long since she had been outside of a locked room that her fear was overtaking all her logic and senses. She forced herself to stand and she kept looking over her shoulder as if she was afraid that Letozay would appear behind her at any moment to take her back. She walked briskly, keeping her head down as much as possible, and wrapping the thick cloak around her as best as she could. She swore that her shame was written across her like a gaudy, bright banner. She swore that everyone that she walked passed knew exactly what she was and what her body had been used for. It was as if she was bare naked and the scars upon her thighs were plain for all to see. The bile closed her throat and her panic made it nearly impossible for her to breathe. She made no attempt to watch where she was going as she was only intent on not being noticed.

If she could she would scream. If she could she would cry. If she could she would yell and rant and tell the whole world of the horrible nature of the man who had captured her. But she couldn't. She couldn't because if she did everyone would know what she was and she could not let that happen.

She collapsed against an old building in exhaustion. Night fell but she could not find the peace within herself to allow sleep to overtake her. Her fear of Letozay appearing at any moment made her body tremble and her mind race.

"Fae?"

The Witch started and nearly shrieked in fear until she could place the voice that had spoken. "Malky?" she questioned as she squinted through the dark to see the Cat. "How did you find me?"

"Jay was not fast enough to follow you but, after all, I am a Cat and I managed."

"And… and Letozay?"

Malky looked at her in confusion for a moment until he realized who the Witch was speaking about. "Did not follow," Malky replied. "You did not kill him."

The Witch dropped her gaze to the floor. "I am not the one to judge him."

"Yet he has harmed you."

"Many men have."

The Cat nodded. "Follow me," he said.

The Witch frowned and looked up at Malky. "And why should I trust?"

"You saved my life, and my father's, at one point. Why would I betray you now?"

Her frown increased but the Witch did not argue. She stood up, shakily, and allowed the Cat to lead the way. He traced a criss-crossing path through the back streets until they came upon a bar that the Witch vaguely recognized. She laid questioning eyes on Malky.

"Go see the barman inside."

The Witch, though suspicious, trusted the Cat and swung the door open. She ignored the stench of alcohol and sex and kept her eyes downcast so as not to attract the attention of any of the drunken, slurring men. She approached the bar table and slowly raised her head to lay a piercing gaze on the barman. He frowned as he looked at her and then smiled warmly as he registered who she was.

"It's been some time," he said. "Two years or more if I remember correctly." He turned around and seemed to be looking for something before returning his attention back to the Witch. He handed her two very familiar objects.

Her broom and her bag. She stared in shock at him as she ran her green hand over the worn wooden handle of the magicked broom. "You… you have kept these this whole time?" she whispered. "But… but why?"

The barman shrugged. "You were never without them. I found it strange that you would flee without them. Then when you never came back I was… worried so to say."

"Worried? About me?" The Witch raised her eyes to meet his gaze. "But why?"

The barman shrugged. "I'm glad to see you alive anyways," he said. "But I regret to say that if you will not buy anything then you must leave."

The Witch nodded as she swung her bag over her shoulder. She slipped her hand into it to feel the familiar worn leather of the Grimmerie and, for the first time in two years, smiled. "Thank you," she whispered as she bowed her head slightly in respect.

He nodded at her with a smile before turning his back on her to wait on a customer. The Witch took the broom and quickly left the bar before she drew any attention to herself. She met Malky a block away where the Cat was sitting on the top of a garbage dumpster. She sat herself down on the street with her back against the dumpster. "Why did he keep them?" she asked; talking more to herself than anyone else.

"Maybe he knows more than you think," Malky answered from his perch above the Witch.

"Is he part of the revolution?"

"If you were meant to know that you would have been told."

The Witch nodded. "I need somewhere to sleep," she muttered. "I cannot survive outside."

"Many people have before."

"But what if it rains!" she shrieked. "I cannot survive! The water will kill me!"

Malky nodded and jumped down from his place on the top of the dumpster. He settled himself in the Witch's lap and tried to keep warm with her body only to find that the Witch's body produced far too little body heat to be of any use for the Cat.

"I'm scared."

Malky looked up at the Witch in confusion. "Of what?" he asked gently.

"Being alone."

"Would you rather brave the streets alone or face the terror of that man – what was his name again? – each night."

"At least Letozay could provide me with a roof over my head and food on the table."

"For the price of your body?"

The Witch inhaled sharply and her body stiffened. "You know?" she whispered.

"How do you think I found you? It was not by a happy chance. There are rumours of you everywhere. The secret green-skinned whore – the famed Wicked Witch reduced to nothing more than a sexual toy."

The Witch was standing in a moment. Her frantic motion jerked Malky from his place on her lap and the Cat scurried a few feet away to protect himself. She was furious at the Animal for speaking so plainly about the torture she had endured for over two years. It sickened her, to see her pitiful life laid bare before her.

"You don't have to be a whore. You have a choice."

"I have to eat! I have to find a home somewhere! There is no other way for me to survive!"

"There are other ways to live without such a sacrifice of your soul."

The Witch grabbed Malky by the scruff of the neck and threw the Cat away from her. He let out a yelp as he struck the broken cobblestone path. "Stop!" she screamed. "Just shut-up!"

He stared up at her in anger at being treated in such a harsh matter. "It seems I was wrong to try and help you," he said. "It seems you would have rathered stay the whore. Did you enjoy it then? Did you find some pleasure in it? You must have if you would choose to live with him rather than accept a free life."

"A free life?" she shrieked. "There will never be a free life for me! I am the Wicked Witch! I am condemned by this title of mine!"

"You had strength back at Shiz. You had determination and conviction for your beliefs and causes. Where did that go? Why did you let yourself lose that?"

She shook her head. Twisted her hands together in nervousness. "I need somewhere to stay," the Witch muttered before turning on her heel and beginning to walk away from the Cat but Malky would not be deterred. He fell into step behind the frantic green woman.

"You left your broom," he said.

The Witch spun around and stalked back to her fallen broom and grabbed it before returning to her frantic walking. She walked in desperation, trying to calm herself down, and clutched her broom to her chest. The Grimmerie rested in her bag slung over her shoulder but even its presence did not settle her stomach or rapidly beating heart.

"I did not enjoy it," she eventually muttered as she walked through the dark streets.

Malky looked up from where he walked at the Witch's heel. "I'm sorry for saying that. I was angry at how you threw me, I did not mean it."

The Witch nodded but Malky's words did little to lessen the ache in her soul. She continued her futile search for somewhere to sleep the night away and eventually the sun rose to bring upon another day, another series of terrible moments.

But, for the first time in a long time, the Witch had gone a night without the torture of Letozay or his paying customers.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

_But, for the first time in a long time, the Witch had gone a night without the torture of Letozay or his paying customers._

--

**Chapter** **Fourteen**:

The days began to meld into each other. After two weeks of freedom from Letozay's tortured existence Malky found a small room above an abandoned corn exchange a few blocks walk away from the main market center of the Emerald City. The Witch was nervous at staying in a place so close to the crowds but she relented – knowing that the chances of finding any other lodging would by slim.

She made a makeshift seating area with upturned boxes and cracked crates. She needed no running water so the lack of a sink or bathing room did not bother her. She piled old sacks together and slept, fitfully, with her head pillowed in her arms. A month after Malky helped to free her the Witch met Jay just outside of Saint Glinda's Chapel. It was a meeting by accident but Jay was overjoyed in seeing her still alive.

The Witch kept her own feelings hidden behind the stone-face mask she had created.

He took a hold of the Witch's wrist, ignoring how the green woman stiffened at his touch, and led her to the shadows behind the chapel. She tried to keep herself calm by repeating, in her mind, that Jay was not there to hurt her. But Jay was a man, and by the fact of that nature alone, he could not be trusted.

"Take this letter," he said; pushing an envelope into her hand. "Deliver it to seventy-nine Brookwelled Street… in the mailbox in the back."

"The revolution?"

"They want you back," he said. "Now prove yourself."

"Prove myself?" the Witch questioned. She hated when she was asked for such a thing; it made her sick with fear. Every time she was told to prove herself something horrible happened.

"Tomorrow, by noon." Jay let go of her wrist and nodded slightly before leaving her. She frowned and looked down at the envelope in her hand.

She wasn't ready.

She dropped her gaze to the ground and fled. She took a twisting path through narrow streets and back alleyways until she found herself at the abandoned corn exchange. She ducked inside, careful of the squeaking steps, and sat herself down on the pile of old sacks. She crossed her legs and turned the envelope over and over in her gloved hands.

"You should get a proper bed."

The Witch looked up at Malky and frowned. "And, pray tell me, how would I acquire such a thing?"

"If you would let me I could help you."

The Witch shook her head. "I'm not letting you drag any of your friends into my disaster of a life."

"They're not really friends."

"Acquaintances then, does it matter?"

Malky frowned. "There's quite a difference."

"I wouldn't know."

"You used to."

The Witch sighed and let the envelope slip from her hand. She watched it fall to the ground before turning her head to meet Malky's piercing gaze. "Don't," she said simply but her voice held a strength that Malky had not heard since freeing her. "My days at Shiz are but a fleeting memory to me now and I have no need to remember."

"What of your friends there? Fiyero and Glinda? And Boq? And your sister Nessa? Why do you refuse to honour their memories?"

"My honour means nothing!"

Malky frowned but sensed that the Witch was becoming agitated so he fell silent. He watched her as she began to pace – a random path twisting through the small confines of the room. She left then, returning over an hour later with a bottle of whiskey and the stench of sex on her clothes.

"You're not under Letozay's control anymore."

The Witch tried to level an angry glare on the pestering Cat but the drunken haze in her eyes made it a laughable, pathetic attempt. Malky frowned. He was worried for the Witch. Worried that she would not be able to put her horror with Letozay behind her. Worried that she would not be able to pick herself up and keep on going. She had no one to help her, no on to hold her hand and show her where to go. It frightened him to see her like this – with the dread and despair pooling in her eyes and the whiskey on her breath.

"I remember when you were just a Kitten," the Witch slurred out as she sat herself down on one of the upturned crates. "You used to sleep by my head. Your fur was so soft."

Malky uncurled himself and jumped down from the rafter he had been situated in. "It's still soft," he said as he jumped on to her lap.

The Witch began to pet him; grateful that he would allow her such a privilege. "I miss them," she muttered.

"I know."

"It hurts, in a way. An ache that burns within me. I try to forget. I'm so desperate to forget. But… it's just… it's there. Always."

"I know."

"Why can't I just forget?"

"The mind is not made to simply forget the past."

"Why did I let him?"

Malky looked up at the Witch in confusion. "Let who do what?"

"Letozay and those men… and women… I could have stopped them. I should have stopped them!" She closed her eyes, took a swig of the whiskey in her hand, and tried to calm herself down.

"The past is the past. There's no use in dwelling over such a thing."

The Witch frowned and opened hazy eyes to be met with a blurred vision of Malky on her lap. "I was weak."

"But you can be strong again, if you would just trust yourself."

The Witch stood up then, sending Malky from her lap with the jerky motion. She drained the rest of the whiskey – nearly half the bottle – in two large gulps. She stared at her trembling hand as she felt the alcohol attacking her system, destroying her sense. She threw the bottle against the ground and it cracked and splintered; sending shards every which way. Malky had to hide behind a crate to protect himself as the glass showered him. He watched in silent horror as the Witch bent down and picked up one of the broken pieces. She ripped off her gloves, tore off her dress, and stood only in her tattered undergarments as the shard was shoved into green skin – dragged down an inner arm to her wrist. Another line drawn from elbow to wrist. Another. One more. She collapsed to her knees, feeling the warm blood trickling down her arm and finding comfort in the old habit.

The alcohol overwhelmed her then and she fell into a crumpled heap of green skin and dirty red blood upon the cracked wooden floor.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

_The alcohol overwhelmed her then and she fell into a crumpled heap of green skin and dirty red blood upon the cracked wooden floor._

--

**Chapter** **Fifteen**:

The Witch played to the revolution's desires. She delivered the packages. Completed the tasks set out to her. She lived her life counting the time that passed until her next orders were to be carried out. She threw herself into her work – trying desperately to drown out her painful past with the busy actions of the present.

Sleep eluded her. The Witch was tormented by her memories and the torture she had endured in Letozay's house. Sleep came to her only with the aid of the whiskey or scotch she traded her body for in the bar down the street. It made her sick to know that the very actions of her past that so tormented her were actions she still partook in. She felt she had no other choice though – there was no other way for her to acquire the few coins she needed to survive.

She ate almost as little as she slept. Feeding herself off the scraps of food that Malky could swipe or beg off of sympathizing people and the food she could buy from the money she did not spend on alcohol.

When her work, the alcohol, and the self-harm could not drown out her memories the Witch turned to the Grimmerie. The broom, resting in the corner near the door, still did not fly for her but the spells she could read easily enough. It took her months to master the ability to start a fire but when she finally did she had cried out in joy and Malky had been shocked by the pure happiness he had seen on her face. It had fled her in mere moments but the Cat had found joy in the very fact that it was there at all.

Most other spells she did not understand and with out understanding she could not make them work. The words alone were ineffective without the desire and knowledge behind them. It made the Witch angry and frustrated her greatly that she could not do all that she felt she should be able to. She had had a talent, back in her school days, and she was desperate to grasp at that power again. But it seemed to come of its own accord and only when she was near death. She wanted to harness that strength that she knew was within her but it seemed an impossible, daunting task.

Her practice with the Grimmerie often left her exhausted and weak. It drained her, any small amount of magick did, and made her head spin. And if she was not careful she would work herself into a convulsive fit like the ones she had had back in Shiz.

The first one had frightened Malky terribly. The Cat feared that the Witch had worked herself to a point of exhaustion so severe that she was dying. When her body had settled Malky had curled himself near her head and waited until she could find the strength to move again. When she could she had told him that it was nothing to worry about – that sometimes such fits just overtook her – and that she would try to be more careful of them in the future.

Even so Malky still cowered when they happened. He hid in the rafters until the Witch's jerky movements and gasping breaths faded away.

One day the Witch returned from completing a relatively minor task set out for her by the revolution to find her small room suddenly filled with furniture. Within its confines a bed – old and rickety – had been shoved against the far wall. A table was set in the middle, with two chairs on either side of it, and a small cooking counter with a wood stove and a wash basin had been pushed against the wall opposite the boarded up window.

The Witch laid a piercing gaze on Malky but the Cat simply shrugged in response. "I told you I did not want anyone else in here!" she shrieked. "I did not want you to get involved!"

"What's done is done," Malky said. "You have a bed now, perhaps you will sleep. And a table, perhaps you will eat."

The Witch fumed and for days she refused to speak to the Cat. But in time her anger subsided and when she realized that whoever Malky had convinced to donate her the furniture would not come to seek repayment with her body she relaxed and took comfort in the simple pleasure of having something more than old crates to sit on. She found that she did sleep a tad better on a real bed and for the first little while she had taken more care to eat if just so that she could sit at the table.

In time the room above the abandoned corn exchange began to carry a semblance of home. For the Witch it sparked a small flame of hope within her. She took that hope and used it to fuel her work with the resistance and her efforts at sorcery. The table, meant to be a dining table, became more of a workspace. The Witch often fell asleep from exhaustion over the opened Grimmerie at the table. Papers were strewn about its surface, scrawled across with smudged ink and half-formed notes. The Witch tried to make connections between the few spells she could perform and the ones that eluded her abilities. She wanted to understand her powers and the Grimmerie seemed to be the key to that.

She just could not understand it though.

It frustrated her. She tried and tried and _tried_ but her sorcery seemed to be at a stalemate where nothing she could do would improve her abilities. It was an echo of the resistance where her work there also seemed to be at a stalemate. The resistance itself seemed to have slowed down and its grand workings had gone completely underground. The Witch had heard whispers from within of the ones in power wanting to use her and her title of the Wicked Witch to bring attention back to their work but so far nothing had come from such rumours.

For that the Witch was glad. She did not feel as if she was strong enough to be scapegoat for the revolution. She knew that if they asked her to do such a thing she would not deny them but it still frightened her. She hoped it would never come to that. She had spent too long hiding herself and keeping to the shadows to suddenly be thrust back into the eyes of everyone again. The simple thought of such a thing occurring made her head spin and she tried her best to not think about it. She found it easier that way – to not think of her past or her future.

And so the Witch lived on – keeping to the darkness and finding comfort in thinking the least that she could.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

_**Author's Note: **For those who never read 'Loathing' here's a little cheat sheet for you. Syren is Malky's father and Kimber (along with her husband Valtin and their daughter Della) is a woman that Elphaba stayed with for a night when she found herself unable to get back to Shiz and helped Elphaba greatly with the unconditional love she showered her with for the short period of time that Elphaba stayed with them. Hope that helps for understanding this chapter and the next one.  
_

--

_And so the Witch lived on – keeping to the darkness and finding comfort in thinking the least that she could._

--

**Chapter Sixteen:**

Her emotions were thrust into her face the moment she saw him. The Cat was curled up in the very back of the cage and her hands shook as she tried to fit the key into the lock. _He must be old by now_, she thought. _Too old to be involved in the dirty mess of the revolution_. The door swung open, just as all the other caged doors had, but the Cat within did not move.

"Syren?" the Witch questioned. "Syren, please, do you remember me?"

The Cat slowly raised a tired head to lay worn eyes on the green Witch before him. He stared at her for a few moments before he could remember where he had seen her face before. "You're the… the woman that…"

"I know where your son is." Her blunt words shocked even the Witch and she quickly turned her head away. "That is… if you want to see him."

He crawled out of the cage then, for it was too small for him to even walk in, and gracefully jumped to the floor. He looked at the Witch and his gaze made her uncomfortable. "You were sent here to free us all… don't forget that."

Her eyes widened in shock and then terror as she realized that the limited amount of time she had before the whole building was set to be engulfed with flame was near ending. She had wasted too much time and now she feared that she would not be able to free all the Animals being held here without risking her own life in the flames.

Her hands trembled as she worked to free the remaining Animals. The majority of them were Cats and small Dogs as the larger Animals were being held in different holding areas from the one she was currently at. The explosion above her, signaling the start of the blue flames, shocked her and made her jump slightly. She worked furiously to open the last remaining cages but, thankfully, she managed to before the flames made their way to the holding area in the basement. When she turned to look down the long hallway she was relieved to find that all the Animals had fled through the small tunnel that the revolution had been creating for months now. It led to a safe house a few blocks away where the Animals would be helped and their wounds healed.

But Syren had not gone. He sat near the stairs, where the Witch could see the blue flames beginning to make their way down. "What are you doing!" she shrieked. "You must go!" She pointed towards the tunnel, her body trembling at the prospect that he would not leave this place.

"I have made peace with my ending," he said. "I was meant to die here."

"But… but you're son!"

"You should go."

The Witch stared at him in horror as the blue flames came closer and closer to engulfing him. "You… you cannot!" she screamed. She bolted down the hallway, dodging the cage doors that poked out from both walls beside her, and grabbed the aging Cat by the scruff of the neck. He yelped and tried to claw at her but he was too old to put up much of a fight.

The Witch threw him into the tunnel and squeezed herself in right behind him. He stared at her in anger but she just smirked back at him. "You condemn me to death if you try to force you way back there."

He made to open his mouth, to reply to the Witch's words, but the blue flames were upon the holding room behind them and the Witch shot forward to shield herself from the burning fire. Syren, having far more room in the tunnel, turned and ran. The Witch herself was forced to crawl at a rather slow pace until she could pull herself free of the tunnel and straighten up in the small house that it had led to.

The Animals had banded together in the far corner and the Witch looked at them in concern before briefly sweeping her eyes around the room to place the revolutionists that were with her. She recognized Jay and focused her attention on him. "Why aren't you helping them?" she shrieked, pointing towards the obviously petrified Animals that had taken comfort in each other's presence. "They are wounded! They need aid!"

Jay shrunk away from the anger in her voice. "They won't let us," he meekly replied. "I don't think they trust us."

The Witch's face softened and she turned to address the Animals. She held her hands out in front of her, palms facing the group of recently freed Animals, to show that she meant them no harm. "I know you have been wronged by humans before," she said. "I know you have faced torment at our hands before and that you find it hard to trust us but please… we only mean to help. If you would permit us we can give you medicine and bandage your wounds. And we know of a place that you can take shelter in for some time… until you can find your bearings again."

"And if we refuse?" a Dog, one of the larger ones, asked; his voice shook in fear.

The Witch pointed towards the door. "You are free to go."

The Animals looked at each other. Some of them left then, leaving in haste and without a second glance backwards. It seemed that the group the Witch had freed had split themselves in half – those that left immediately and those that took the chance and stayed behind.

The Witch went to work instantly. She ordered the revolutionists around her into action. Soon she had a system going with specific people treating specific types of wounds. She tried desperately to lock her emotions away behind her stone-faced mask but at times she found her mask cracking slightly and her breath would catch in her throat. She tried to treat one Cat, a Kitten really, with a nasty head wound that had become infected and swollen. She had peeled back the broken skin to find a cracked skull and, beneath it, a badly bruised brain. The swelling was painful for the Kitten and the Witch, even with the Grimmerie to help her, could find no way to help the wound heal.

She stayed with the Kitten – who she learned was named Lyreal – until the wee hours of the morning where she finally passed away. It nearly made the Witch cry and she had to swallow away the lump in her throat so that she could keep her emotions in control.

Jay sat down beside her. "You should go," he said. "We have this under control. You have had a long day."

"I'm fine,"

"You were the one who freed them, you were the one who did the dirty job, you need to rest. I can see it in your eyes… you're exhausted."

"But what of –"

"I will take care of Lyreal," Jay interrupted. "She will be honoured as she should be. Do not fret."

The Witch nodded and slowly stood up. "You did good today," she said to Jay. It was the first compliment she had ever given the man. If he thought back through their shaky relationship he would have realized that it was one of the few times she had ever talked to him without the cold, calculating, defensive tone in her voice.

She left then with the promise to the Animals taking shelter there for the night that she would return on the next morrow. She hid herself in the thick cloth of the coat she had taken from Letozay and kept her head down. But, for all her attempts at staying unnoticed, it seemed that fate would not allow such a thing to occur.

A man bumped into her, rather harshly, and she stumbled backwards before falling to the ground. The man that had hit her stopped in his rather rushed walking and turned around to see who he had hit. When he realized he had caused a woman to fall he was at her side in a moment, offering a hand to help her up.

The Witch, knowing that she could not very well refused his help, took his offered hand with her own gloved one and allowed him to help her up. "Thank you," she muttered before attempting to leave.

He would not let go of her. The Witch raised her head slightly so that her piercing eyes gazed through her curtain of black hair. "What?" she spat out, forgetting to mind her manners in front of this obviously high-standing man before her.

He seemed to have some sort of inclination as to who she was because suddenly he had his hand tangled in her hair and he yanked her head up. The morning sun caught her face and when she saw the realization swallow the man's expression she knew she had been discovered.

"The Witch!"

The scream of warning came from the man whose hand was still tangled in her hair. She tried to pull away from him, to flee, but his grasp was too strong for her. She grabbed his wrist with both her hands and tried to forcefully pull his hand out of her hair but she could not – she did not have the strength for such a thing.

Someone from the crowd yelled; "She did it! She burnt that building down!"

"She killed all the animals in there! Burnt them to death!"

"She brings flames and disaster to all!"

"Get her!"

"Kill her!"

The man holding her hair and trapping her in place suddenly cried out in pain. The Witch barely registered that it was Syren who had bit the man before she pried his hands off of her and ran. She didn't bother to try and hide herself – it was far too late for that – she was simply trying to get away. She darted into the alleyways, hoping to lose herself in the shadows, but it was too bright out for such a thing. She cursed the sun then, and its beacon of light that it shined on her and her green skin.

The crowds became louder, angrier. It had been so long since they had heard or seen of the Wicked Witch that her sudden appearance had them in an uproar. The Witch knew that no matter how fast she ran or how twisting her path was the crowds would find her again. There was just too many of them for her to escape.

She would be caught.

The realization made her panic and terror grew within her. She had done nothing wrong! It made her angry to see the ignorance of these people so plainly before her. Did she not deserve some respite from them and their madness?

She heard gunfire and knew that the Officials had been alerted to her presence. Now any hope of hiding in the abandoned corn exchange was lost to her as going there would lead the mob directly to her home – and to Malky – and she could not allow such a thing. She wished for her broom then, and the ability to make it fly. If she only had it and its magick powers she would be able to fly into the sky and away from the people's anger and misplaced fury.

The bullets flew against the street around until one found its mark. It struck her in the back, just above her right shoulder blade, and sent her crashing to her knees. She gasped for breath, trying to block out the pain and hold back her tears. She felt the blood pouring down her back, staining her clothes and skin.

Then hands were upon her. They grabbed her arms and hoisted her up; forced her to stand. Someone grabbed her hair and yanked her head up so that she had to look at them. She inhaled sharply at the man she saw.

Letozay.

She had had no idea that he was an Official, an officer of the peace. But it made sense now – how he had hid his imprisonment of her. No one would question a high-order Official of keeping a sex-slave in his own house or a dirty bar in the very same building. He was a respectable man to the people of Oz and that fact nearly made the Witch vomit.

When he yanked her backwards and tried to get her out of the street and away from the crowds he, not so accidentally, grazed his hand across her breast and smiled at her.

The Witch found her great, famed sorceress powers then. She cast Letozay and the Officials from her. Sending them sprawling to the ground. A great ring of flames surrounded her, protecting her, and for a minute or two not a single sound was made. The angry mob, with the confused Officials, tried to shield themselves from the burning flames that encircled the great and terrible Wicked Witch. It was then that the broom came. The Witch was just as shocked as the people around her but she did not let that show. She simply took a hold of the broom, mounted it, and prayed to whatever higher being was listening that the broom would fly for her.

It did.

The Wicked Witch flew away and as she became a silhouette in the rising sun the circle of flames that had been protecting her faded away into nothingness; just like the Witch as she flew away to find somewhere to hide away until she thought it safe to return to her home.

She did not last long until the wind and the blood loss made her vision spin and her head ache terribly. She tried to stay flying but as the adrenalin and fear of capture left her system the exhaustion overtook her and the broom began to shake in her hold and falter. She tried to land somewhere safe but she seemed to have lost her ability to focus. She crashed into someone's backyard, knocking a large chunk of the fence down. The sound must have startled the occupants of the house because they came thundering out in a flurry of movement and yelling.

The Witch brought her left hand up to her shoulder and pressed against the bullet wound that had struck her there. It still bled and she could feel how much of the red, sticky, life-giving substance had soaked her clothes. It worried her but she had not the time to concern herself over such thing, she had much more pressing matters to deal with.

Like the man pointing the rather large kitchen knife at her face.

She blinked rapidly to try and clear her vision but it did not help. She tried to stand but the man shook his head and held the knife closer to her face.

"Please…" The Witch's voice sounded broken as she spoke but she could not control it. "I… I don't mean you any harm. If you would just let me I'll be gone in a moment."

"You're the Wicked Witch!"

"Please… sir… I don't mean you any harm. I'll be on my way… please…"

"You broke my fence!"

The Witch looked over her shoulder to see the damage she had done. She winced at the pain it caused her wound and she slowly turned back to face the angry man. "I did not mean to. I'm terribly sorry."

"I should kill you!"

"Please do!" The Witch's eyes widened in shock and horror at her own words. She turned her head to stare at the ground. "I mean… well… you shouldn't… and I… well…" she stammered out before falling silent. She shook her head to try and clear her thoughts before laying a hand on the knife and pushing it away from her. She stood up. "I'm going to go now," she said as she stumbled towards her broom and bent down to pick it up. She held it in her hand and as she did she realized that it was not going to fly for her. Not again, not now. She cursed quietly as she clenched it in her hand.

The man grabbed her arm and yanked her towards him. "I'm taking you to the Officials! The Wizard will grant me quite the award for bringing you to him."

"No!" The Witch tried to pull herself free but she was too weak. "What do you want! I'll give you anything! Please… just… don't turn me in!"

"Anything?"

"Do you want my body? Do you want sex?" the Witch shrieked. "Take it! Take me for all you want! I don't care!"

The woman near the man, the person the Witch assumed was the man's wife, gasped in horror. "You don't care?" she asked in shock.

"Oh shove it!" the Witch screamed. "Oz knows I've done it enough! What is one more man? What is the price of my body for the price of my life? Just take it! If it means letting me go then just take it!"

A new voice interrupted the Witch's yelling; "What is all this commotion about?"

The Witch turned to face the newcomer to find herself looking over the fence to the neighbour's yard to stare into a face she remember from her days back at Shiz. "Valtin?" she asked quietly. The man look startled that she knew who he was. "Valtin? Don't you remember me?" She suddenly found the strength to break free of the man's hold on her wrist and stumbled towards the fence and what she could only assume would be the protection that Valtin and his family could offer her.

"So you are the Witch," Valtin breathed out. "Kimber had thought you were but she wasn't sure."

"Kimber!" The Witch was suddenly ecstatic at the fact of seeing that welcoming mother-figure again. She hadn't thought that she had flown far enough to end up at the Lower Levels near Shiz University but she apparently had. That fact shocked her but she had no time to dwell on it. She had to find safety within Valtin's house before this other man took control of her and sent for the Officials.

"You know this Witch?" the man questioned.

"Let me have her," Valtin said. "I'll take care of it."

"You're not taking my prize away from me!" the man screamed.

"She's not a prize!"

"She's not! But the award I'll get when I turn her in will be!"

The Witch turned her head back and forth between Valtin and the man but their screaming made her head ache even more. She opened her mouth, meant to speak her part, but the blood loss finally overwhelmed her and she fell, unconscious, to the hard ground.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

_She opened her mouth, meant to speak her part, but the blood loss finally overwhelmed her and she fell, unconscious, to the hard ground._

--

**Chapter Seventeen: **

She awoke in a soft bed, not the jail cell in the Southstairs that she had been expecting. It calmed her slightly, to know that she was sleeping in a bed and not on the floor. But the question of where exactly she was was in the forefront of her mind and she could not find any peace within herself until she determined that she was at least relatively safe.

"It's nice to see you again."

The Witch raised her head slightly to lay eyes on a woman sitting beside the bed. "Kimber?" she questioned and the woman smiled warmly.

"What brings you here?" Kimber asked in her off-handed way.

"You haven't heard?"

"About the burning of the animal shelter and your involvement in it? And the way you protected yourself with a circle of flames before flying off into the sky?"

The Witch nodded. "It wasn't an animal shelter."

"I didn't think you would be so cruel to do such a thing."

"It was an Animal imprisonment area. I released the Animals and the building was burnt down afterwards. Anything else you hear is the Wizard's propaganda."

"If it helps at all I never believed that you were wicked."

The Witch smiled, just barely. "It does help," she whispered.

"I'm glad."

"You shouldn't be helping me."

"I don't fear what they will do to me."

"And if they take you and Valtin away what will happen to little Della? Did you think about that?"

"Everything will turn out just fine."

The Witch slowly sat up, minding her injured shoulder, and stared at Kimber with a hardness in her eyes that Letozay and his customers had beaten and raped into her. "Nothing turns out _just_ _fine_," she spat out. "And I have to go before I cause you and your family any harm."

Kimber looked shocked, and a little hurt, before she quickly composed herself. "And where will you go? Injured as you are you cannot possibly fly that magicked broom, can you?"

The Witch did not reply and instead she slowly slid out of the bed. She straightened her dress as best as she could and grabbed her stolen cloak from where it laid across the foot of the bed. "Thank you for helping me, again, but I cannot permit you to continue to do so. I am a fugitive and what you are doing is against the law."

"I don't care."

"But I do!"

"Elphaba … please… stay for at least a little while."

The Witch froze at the sound of her name. It sounded so foreign to her, it always did now, and she turned to lay piercing eyes on Kimber. "Don't you ever utter my name again!" she hissed out. "No one can know me as anything more than the Wicked Witch!"

"But why?"

"Are you a fool!" the Witch shrieked. "If my name is discovered they will go after my family! I cannot allow that to happen!"

Then chaos struck the house. It shocked the Witch and made her freeze in both horror and terror. In moments the Officials were swarming the first floor and Kimber shrunk away from the door in fear. The Witch grabbed her broom and burst from the room in a flurry of green skin and black cloth. She stood at the top of the stairs, making herself as imposing as she possible could, and screamed: "These are my prisoners! I have witched them and if you do not leave now I will witch you as well!" She pointed the broom at them, knowing that every word she said was a farce but hoping that she would frighten the Officials enough to leave, if only for a moment.

It seemed to work until Della began to cry in the kitchen and Kimber exited the room she had been in to stand beside the Witch. "She lies to protect us," Kimber said. "Please… do not harm her, she does not mean to hurt anyone."

The Witch turned flashing eyes on Kimber. "Shut-up!" she hissed out.

Then all she could see was red. It took her a moment to realize that it was not a problem with her vision but rather a very real and physical impediment. It was blood. Kimber's blood. The Witch blinked rapidly and wiped the blood from her eyes with the back of her hand to be met with the sight of Kimber lying in a crumpled heap before her with a bullet wound clean through her head.

Something snapped in the Witch and for the first time in her life she used her powers not to save herself or to protect someone she loved but to cause harm for no other reason than revenge. The Officials were cast back from the stairs, their guns ripped from their hands and broken in half. The broom trembled in her hands as the magickal powers that soured through her made her head ache and her mind unfocused. She wasn't quite certain how she did it but in a few moments the Officials were all knocked unconscious by the pure power and overwhelming nature of her magick. She stormed down the stairs – mad with grief and guilt – and paused as she laid eyes on Valtin as he stood in the main sitting room with Della wrapped in his arms to protect her.

"They will blame Kimber's murder on me," the Witch whispered. "It is not true but Oz will believe it. Just… I need you to know that it wasn't me. I did not shoot her. And I suggest you make yourselves scarce until this blows over."

"But…"

"Never help me again. Never mention my name. Never say that you ever knew me. I bring disaster with me. I _am_ disaster."

She left. Clutching her broom and knowing she looked like a mess covered in Kimber's blood and trembling with her suppressed grief. She mounted her broom and, to her surprise, it flew for her. She flew it low, knowing that the people could probably see her but she did not care. In time, she didn't know how long – it could have been hours, it could have been days – she crashed into the alleyway near the safe house that had been set up for the Animals she had helped to save days earlier. She stumbled into the house, a mess of blood and torn clothing, and nearly ran right into Jay. He stared at her in concern.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I only mean to help!" she shrieked as her grief overwhelmed her. "Why does everything I do end in pain and disaster? I don't understand!"

Jay was shocked at her outburst and did not know how to handle it. For anyone else he would simply take the person in an embrace but he feared doing that with the Witch… he feared initiating such close human contact with the green woman. "What happened?"

"They will hunt me down and kill anyone who helps me! What am I to do? I cannot survive on my own but I don't need the guilt of everyone's deaths on my shoulders! Why? Why does Oz hate me so? I never did anything wrong!"

Jay took her hand and squeezed it gently in support. "It's going to be okay," he said. "Look, you need to lay low for a bit. The city is in an uproar over you."

"I know!"

"Go home Fae. Go home, or wherever you sleep, and stay there until the people calm down."

The Witch nodded. "But the Animals?" she asked. "What of them?"

"I will take care of them. I will make sure that they are all taken care of it. Trust me in that, okay?"

"I will send Malky to you, if he will permit such a thing. If you need me tell him… he will fetch me."

Jay nodded. "Go home now," he said. "Go home and rest and deal with what has happened. You are obviously disturbed and something terrible has happened so please… look to yourself for once. For me?"

The Witch fled. She clutched her broom to her chest, leaving the Grimmerie in the safe house just as she had the time before, and ducked through the shadows of the back alleyways. She kept her head downcast and was desperate to not be noticed. She couldn't do it again. She could not be discovered again. It would kill her this time.

Something was suddenly in her path. The ball of fur tripped the Witch up and she fell to her hands and knees. She spun around to face the imposing object to find herself staring right into the eyes of Syren.

He was angry.

"Why?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous. "Why didn't you leave me there to die like you should have? Like I was meant to?"

The Witch opened her mouth to speak but she could not find the right words so she simply shut her mouth again. She closed her eyes and turned her head – unable to look the Cat in the eye.

"I was supposed to die!"

"I know where your son is," the Witch whispered.

"You had no right to choose whether I live or die!"

"Then jump in the river! Run yourself out to the fields and never come back!" The Witch screamed. "If you want to die there are many ways to go about it that would not leave me ridden with guilt! I have enough guilt and pain to last me a hundred life times! I did not need your death on my shoulders as well!"

Syren looked at her in shock for a moment. "I never want to see your face again," he spat out.

The Witch nodded stiffly. "I trust that if you ever wish to see your son again you will be able to find me," she said as she stood up. "I only tried to help but yet again it seems I have failed. Please… forgive me for my misjudgement."

Then she was gone. The broom held tightly in her hand and her head bowed down to prevent recognition. A few minutes later she quickly checked her surroundings to make sure no one was following her before she quickly ducked into the door of the abandoned corn exchange. She headed up the stairs and when she made it to her room she headed directly for the cabinets underneath the cooking table and grabbed one of the many half-drunk bottles of whiskey she stored there. She let the broom drop to the floor as she sat herself down at the table and simply drank.

She drank until the memories turned into a fog of hazy blackness. She drank until there were no more bottles left to drink. She drank until she found herself on her hands and knees in a pool of her own vomit. Then she broke one of the bottles and soon the beginning of more scars decorated her arm and the pool of vomit became a pool of blood-red vomit. She struggled to breathe around the lump in her throat as she forced herself not to cry. She couldn't cry. She refused to cry.

So she screamed. The sound was purely animal and it seemed to bounce off the walls and echo around her. She screamed until her throat was hoarse and no more voice would come. She crawled to her bed where she barely managed to collapse onto the thin mattress.

Malky, who had been watching the disaster unfold from the rafters, jumped down and snuggled beside the distraught Witch. She slowly pet him – finding the action both repetitive and calming – and tried to speak, to tell the Cat her story.

Try as she might the Witch simply could not force her voice out around the lump of guilt and grief that had settled in the back of her throat.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

_Try as she might the Witch simply could not force her voice out around the lump of guilt and grief that had settled in the back of her throat._

--

**Chapter Eighteen:**

Malky was afraid. Afraid for the Witch's life. On the streets he heard the tales of how she had murdered the innocent Kimber and would have murdered her husband and child had the Officials not deterred her. He knew it was false – he still remembered that family from the day he had stayed there with the Witch back when she went by the name of Elphaba. It concerned him, how readily the people of Oz would believe these lies sprouting about the Witch just so that they could have someone to blame. It sickened him and for the first time he felt he might understand, to some small extent, what the Witch felt every minute of her life.

The Witch, for her part, seemed content to drink the days away and fall unconscious during the night. Malky could tell that the death of Kimber weighed heavily on the Witch's mind but no matter how hard he tried he could not get her to speak. And she kept mumbling about how she had only tried to help and how, strangely enough, she had found someone dear to the Cat. But she wouldn't name the person that she thought was so important to Malky so the Cat was left to ponder the meanings of her drunken rants.

Malky also came to realize that the alcohol seemed to increase the frequency of the Witch's physical fits. It terrified the Cat, to know that he was watching the Witch drink herself to death, but despite his best efforts she would not allow herself to be helped. So he was forced to watch and pray and hope.

He was never one to place much worth in hope.

On the sixth day of the Witch's binge-drinking she awoke to a splitting headache and the realization that she had absolutely no alcohol left. She frowned and, knowing it was nearly noon, had no way to get any. The men she would give her body over to for a bottle or two would not be at the bars for at least ten more hours, if not more. She began to panic and started pacing. She looked up at Malky, who was perched in the rafters, and stared at him for a few moments.

"Do you know the Animal safe house we set up?" she asked. Malky nodded. "Go there, please, and fetch Jay. Tell him to come and to… to bring the Grimmerie. Can you do that?"

Malky left immediately, hoping against hope that this was a small sign that the Witch was asking for help in her own roundabout way. It took him longer than he wished but in time he found Jay and convinced the man to follow him. The trek to the Witch's house was made in silence as Jay clutched the Grimmerie close to his chest – almost as if he was afraid that he would be accused for being the Witch for simply holding the book.

When they entered the room above the abandoned corn exchange the Witch was sitting at the dining table, spinning a glass on its edge over and over again. Malky jumped onto the cooking counter and sat down, content to watch this exchange in silence. He had never really seen the Witch talking to another human and he wondered how she dealt with such a situation. He had a feeling she did not handle it well.

Jay sat down in the chair opposite the Witch and slid the Grimmerie towards her. The Witch stopped twirling the glass and looked up at her revolutionist connection. She stared at him and tried to ignore the ache pounding against the back of her eyes. She wasn't sure if the ache was from the alcohol or the effort it was taking her not to cry.

"It's my fault she's dead."

Jay simply looked at the Witch. He didn't express the shock he was feeling at her confession. He didn't express how surprised he was that the terrible Wicked Witch was talking to him without any need to. She was not driven by their work in the revolution to talk to him – she was doing this of her own choice.

"I should have never gone to them for help."

"Who?"

The Witch dropped her gaze to stare at the Grimmerie. "They were an innocent family with too big of a heart. They wanted only to help me, and that got Kimber killed."

"Kimber? That… that woman that they're saying –"

"I didn't kill her!" Then the Witch was upon Jay. Pinning him against the bed. Mounting him. The act of sex had been such a constant part in her life that to be without it left her fitful and agitated. She knew she would get nothing from it this time but the shame that it would bring her but she could not find it within herself to care. To feel needed, if only just for her body, was all she wanted. She wanted someone to care, someone to hold her, even if it was just for the purely carnal passion that sex was.

Jay, being male as he was, did not resist the Witch's advances. He was too caught up in the act occurring to notice the self-inflicted scars upon her green skin or the scars on her inner thighs that marked what she was. Jay didn't care that in time the Witch became listless on the bed and that he was making love to someone who did not truly want it. He didn't realize, that in a way, he was raping the Witch. To him she had initiated the act and even if she was regretting it there was nothing to be done. He would take her body until he was done and there was nothing that the Witch could do to stop him for she did not have the strength to resist. So she laid still and let him use her for what, she considered, to be the only use she still offered this world. It filled her with shame but, in some small way, made her calm inside. To know that men still wanted her body, as thin and frail as it was, was comforting to her. She knew that was strange, wrong even, but she could not help herself. She could not change what she thought of herself no matter how hard she tried.

Her father, Avaric, the men from Shiz, and Letozay and his paying customers, had all ingrained her worthlessness into her. To herself she was nothing more than an object that met a need. And right now she was meeting that need for Jay.

When he was done he collapsed beside her in exhaustion. Sweat covered his body from the effort he had exuded and the Witch was careful to not touch the liquid incase it should burn her. She laid unmoving, her body stiff and feeling incredibly dirty. She could feel Jay's fluids on her scarred thighs and inside of her mutilate body. It overwhelmed her and, for a moment, she feared that she would vomit right where she laid but she managed to keep herself under control.

"You should go," the Witch whispered.

"Fae?" Jay looked at her in concern. "Fae… are you well?"

She stood up, trying to straighten her hopelessly crumpled dress to cover herself, and pointed a shaking hand towards the door. "Thank you for bringing the Grimmerie but you must go now."

"But Fae… we just… didn't this mean –"

"Go!" she screamed, interrupting Jay before he could even suggest that perhaps their relationship could mean something to her.

He didn't move. "You don't have sex with someone unless you care for them in _some_ way," he said.

"Well I do!" she shrieked. "And you must go now!"

"So you just… wanted sex?"

"It is all I'm good for!" Her eyes widened, her eyebrows raised, she brought her hand up to cover her opened mouth. She had shocked herself with her own words and now she could not stand to even face Jay anymore. "Go!" she screamed. "You _must_ go!"

Jay was too horror-stricken to argue with the Witch. He stood up and, slowly, made his way across the small room that the green woman called her home. He left, trying to discern what had happened and where he now stood with the distraught Wicked Witch of the West.

The Witch sat down at the table in exhaustion. She buried her head in her hands and struggled to breathe as she tried to keep her tears at bay. "What have I done?" she muttered but no one answered her. There was no one to answer her, in truth, there was no real answer. She didn't know what she had done. Had she had sex simply in hopes that it would bring her some amount of pleasure? Had she had sex because she cared for Jay? Had she had sex because that is all she knew how to do?

She didn't know.

"I can truthfully say that I did not expect that," Malky said from his perch on the cooking counter.

"Shut-up!" the Witch shrieked.

Malky fell silent and, realizing that his presence in the home was not going to help matters, left through the opened window above the Witch's bed. The green woman sat still at the table as she desperately tried to sort out her thoughts. She grabbed the glass she had been distracting herself with earlier and stared at it. She held if for over an hour before anger and shame overwhelmed her and she threw it against the wall. It shattered above her bed and sent glass all over her sheets. She would have to clean it before she could sleep there again.

She stood up and moved, somewhat shakily, towards a small bag beside her bed. She had brought it from Shiz but she had never once looked at it since then. It held too many memories that she could not bear to face anymore. Her mind was too frail to deal with such things.

The Witch opened the bag and a green hand began to slowly move things about within it. She pushed aside old schoolbooks and notebooks, useless trinkets and bottles of Glinda's bathing oils, to find what she was searching for. She pulled it out and stared at it. A green looking glass wrapped protectively in a soft black cloth. It was cracked near the edge a little – a result from the harsh way that the Witch had handled the bag before.

She returned to the table and let the black cloth fall from the oval shaped green glass. In her hand it seemed to reflect her verdigris back towards her – as if she needed even more of a reminder of her stained colouring – and taunt her. She stared at it, in it, through it. She wanted it to tell her something, to show her the path she could take.

The Witch saw Nessa.

She swallowed the glass in her hands; shielding its reflective surface from her eyes. She couldn't bear the thought of her sister – so frail and broken and determined to prove herself. It made her sick to think of such things. She kept the looking glass covered so she wouldn't have to see the image it taunted her with and the life she had left behind.

She grabbed the cloth and wrapped it around the looking glass to hide it from herself. She set it on the table and just stared at it as if it would shrivel and turn to dust by the force of her gaze alone. It did not.

The Witch stood up, grabbed her coat, and flew from her small home in a blur of green skin and black cloth. Night had fallen – begging the question of how long she had sat at the table twisting the time away – and the darkness hid her from the world. She ducked into a back alleyway and did what she needed to get what she desired. Nearly an hour later, with her dress crumpled even more and the stench of alcohol staining her skin, the Witch returned to her modest home. She sat back down at the table but instead of twirling around a glass or staring at the mocking images the looking glass gave her she carefully organized the white powder she had attained in the dark alleyway with a small knife.

A few minutes later the blood seemed to pour from her nose as the air itself danced around her. The Witch felt light-headed and could hear the blood rushing in her head. Her heart pounded in her chest and her breaths came rapid and unconnected as the white powder was all but gone from her table. Her mind flashed back to days in her shared dorm room where she partook in the same activities and feared discovery.

But no one would discover her this time. No one would unravel her lies to find the truth behind her suffering. No one would hold her hand and whisper nonsense to calm her down. Tonight she was alone, as she was damned to be, and no one would come to save her. No one would come to pick up the pieces and try to put them together.

The Witch was alone to face her demons with nothing but the drugs and the alcohol to calm her racing thoughts.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

_The Witch was alone to face her demons with nothing but the drugs and the alcohol to calm her racing thoughts._

--

**Chapter Nineteen:**

It came in waves; violent coughs that choked the air from her lungs and sent the blood and bile from her stomach to the hard, cracked wooden floor. The withdrawal from the drugs was destroying her body and sending her mind into a trembling abyss of numbness. Malky curled up in the rafters and watched in silence; begging for someone, anyone, to come and save the Witch. He was petrified that she was going to die but there was nothing he could say or do that would ease her suffering.

She curled around herself, clutching her stomach and willing the nausea to disappear. She knew she made a pathetic sight as she laid on the floor of her tiny, dilapidated home surrounded by blood and vomit but she could not find the strength to get up and clean herself. She could barely even find the strength to keep herself breathing.

Then Jay came. He was a silent shadow in the dim light of the sun that shined in through the one window that was not boarded up. He kneeled down beside the semi-conscious Witch and pushed the blood-stained, vomit covered hair from her face so that he could try and make eye-contact with her. The Witch stared straight ahead and refused to meet Jay's concerned gaze.

"Go," she muttered but her voice lacked any sort of strength or conviction.

"You need help," Jay said as he watched her struggling to breathe.

"I'm the Wicked Witch," she choked out. "I don't need help… I can do anything I want!"

Jay sighed and scooped her frail body up in his arms. He was surprised at how light she was – her thick clothing had always hid her starving frame – but he did not approach the topic with the Witch; now was not the time to lecture her on needing to eat. Instead he laid her shaking body on her bed and sat down beside her.

"What is going on?" he asked quietly.

The Witch did not reply.

"Fae, please… something is terribly wrong. Why won't you let me help you?"

The Witch closed her eyes, took in a shaky breath. "Why do you care?" she whispered. "Why do you want to help me?"

"You have the ability to become a legend, a power in this world, and I don't want to see that go to waste."

"So I am just a tool for you and your revolution?" she spat out.

"It's your revolution too."

The Witch fell silent at that. "You don't understand."

"You won't let me."

His words jerked the Witch back into a time in her life where people – her friends – had accused her of the very same thing that Jay had just accused her of. It shocked her, to see how her life was just repeating itself. It was like some cruel circle she could not escape. A train that kept going around and around on the same tracks and would never stop to let her off. It frightened her, terrified her, as she realized she was on the very same path of destruction she had been on at Shiz.

"Stay away from me," the Witch said. "I bring nothing but pain and chaos."

"You're my partner in this revolution, I cannot leave you behind."

The Witch frowned and opened her eyes to finally make eye contact with Jay. "Partner?" she breathed; as if the very thought of being such a thing to anyone scared her.

Jay looked shocked at the Witch's reaction. "Of course," he said. "Look at all we've done together. We've accomplished more in this revolution then most. Can't you see that?"

"You put too much worth on my insignificant life."

"You're life isn't insignificant. For Oz's sake you hold the title of the Wicked Witch!" His face reddened with frustration. "Everyone knows who you are!"

The Witch sat up suddenly. "And everyone wants me dead!" she screamed and her face was so close to Jay that he could smell the alcohol and vomit on her breath.

"Calm down," he said but his level and controlled voice only angered the Witch further.

"Get out!" she shrieked. "Get out and leave me be!" She stood up from her bed and grabbed Jay's arm. She threw him towards the door and he stumbled before catching himself on the wall and righting his balance. "You should never have come here!" she screamed. "You must go before I ruin you!"

"Ruin me?"

"Go!" She pointed at the door but her hand trembled with the effort and Jay watched her in concern.

Then she fell unconscious.


	20. Chapter Twenty

_**Author's Note: **This chapter takes some dialogue directly from 'Wicked'. I don't mean any plagiarism but I felt that for this story to stay in canon as much as possibly it had to be done this way. Hope you guys don't mind._

--

_Then she fell unconscious._

--

**Chapter Twenty:**

For almost half a year they lived together. The Witch let Jay use her body and in return he brought her a few bottles of whiskey a week. He thought they were in love… the Witch knew otherwise. He thought they cared for each other… the Witch felt sick for leading him on.

She hated herself for using him but she could not help it. He loved her, she could see that, and he was blinded by that love. The Witch had a foreboding feeling that his emotions would get him killed but she could not let herself believe in that. She tried to force away her fears with the whiskey and the pastimes they partook in underneath the stained covers of her creaking bed.

But he knew. Jay knew that the Witch did not love him but he refused to acknowledge it. He knew and she knew that he knew but no one spoke of it and the only one who seemed to give any effort into righting their confused relationship was Malky. However, the Cat was not heard when he spoke so he fell silent and stayed away as much as he dared to. So their strange relationship continued day after day until Jay left to buy some food and did not come back.

His disappearance left the Witch distraught and frantic. She paced. Twisted her hair in her hands. Chewed her nails. Clawed at the skin on her inner arms. Bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood in her mouth.

For three days and three nights she sat in silence in the room above the abandoned corn exchange. She heard nothing of Jay or his whereabouts and Malky could not get her to speak a single word. She had never loved the man but she had come to welcome his presence and though their love-making occurred in the darkness of the night so he could not see her scared and mutilated body she still found comfort in the fact that he wanted her body at all.

It was Malky, who had gone to try and find the disappearing Jay, that returned on the morning of the forth day carrying an air of complete and utter despair with him and the Witch knew that something was horribly wrong.

"Follow me," was all Malky said and the Witch knew not to argue with the Cat. She grabbed her coat and slipped her boots on. They stayed to the shadows of the back alleyways and hidden streets for what seemed like hours until they arrived at a small, rundown house near the edge of the city. Malky nodded towards the door and the Witch, without knocking or making any sound, pushed the door opened and slipped inside.

The smell of death assaulted the Witch the instant she stepped inside the house and her stomach had that falling feeling that came with the dread being pulled up from her buried emotions. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and stared at her feet as she trudged across the dirty floors, following the trail her nose led her on, until she stepped into the kitchen.

She saw the blood before she saw the body. It was thick and dry and stank terribly as it stained the once white tiles of the kitchen a dirty brown colour. She followed its twisting trail to lay eyes on the listless body of the man she had come to find friendship in.

Jay.

Jay the revolutionist.

Jay the responsible.

Jay the caring.

Jay the nighttime lover.

Jay the… the _friend_.

The Witch fell to her knees – feeling the dried, sticky blood slowly seeping through her thick stockings – and covered her mouth with one hand while she clutched her stomach with the other to try and stop the bile tickling the back of her throat from escaping. She stared at his bloody body in shock. The knife he had used to slash his throat was still in his limp grasp. The wound in his neck was deep and jagged and a disgusting mess of blood and torn flesh. It made her heart ache and her stomach churn as she looked at him and knew, she really knew, that this had all be her fault.

He had loved her and she had toyed with his heart. He had wanted to help her and she had only teased his hopes at healing her. It made her blood run cold to see the death before her – the death she had caused.

The tears burned at her eyes, threatening to fall, but she blinked them back. She couldn't let the salty water escape, she couldn't let go of that control, so she forced them back with all the effort she could. She let herself focus on only keeping the tears at bay just so that she would not have to focus on the lifeless body of Jay that laid before her.

Malky approached the Witch with something in his mouth. She took it, if only to distract herself from the horror before her, to find that it was a piece of paper with six simple words scrawled across it in Jay's messy script.

_I'm sorry. It's not your fault._

She crumpled the paper in her hand. She was angry, furious. Not at the fact that Jay had killed himself, not at the fact that Jay had abandoned her, but at the fact that Jay had the strength to do what the Witch so desired but could not.

Jay had freed himself from the torment of life while the Witch stayed trapped in her circling train of suffering that she could not escape. She wanted the release that Jay had granted himself but she could not do it… she could not bring herself to do the deed. There was still too much that she had to do. There was still far too many sins she had to atone for before she could even considering taking the course that Jay had.

She threw the crumpled piece of paper at the dead body of Jay and ran. She ran through the streets, not bothering to even try and hide herself, until her body collapsed in exhaustion against a weather-worn building. She panted for breath and tried to ignore the stinging pain that radiating from the bullet wound in her shoulder that still had not healed. She wanted to scream, to cry, to find some sort of release for the pain within her, but she could not. She feared bringing any attention to herself because she knew that she did not have the strength to protect herself if she was discovered. For all she was she was still, and always would be, the Wicked Witch that the people of Oz – and probably the rest of the world – wanted dead.

_The Wicked Witch of the West._

The title made the Witch laugh. She wondered where it had come from. She did not live in the Western region, not anywhere near it. Why was she labeled as so? She lived in the very heart of the Emerald City, as close to its center as possible, yet the people believed she resided in the West and flew in and out on her broom whenever she desired. The very thought was hilarious to her… she could not even fly her broom! How could she live in the West?

_Perhaps I will one day, _she thought to herself as she pushed off the building and stumbled down the street. _Just to spite them all. Just to live up to this ridiculous lie that the Wizard has made my life in to._

She wandered through the streets until the sun began to rise on the morning. She wrapped her coat around herself and kept her head down to keep herself from being recognized. Soon she found herself at Saint Glinda's Square and she ducked into the chapel. She made her way down the hall and kneeled down in front of the water-stained painting of Saint Glinda. It was the room she received her direct orders from the revolution but today she did not come for direction or assignments – she came to pray because she had nowhere else to go and no more options to try.

The Witch pulled her shawl out from one of the coat's pockets and draped it over her head. She sat there for hours, knowing she was – in a way – running away from the truth but having no strength to stop herself. Her hands were clasped together in front of her and her lips formed words muttered in a breathless whisper. She prayed for her soul, for her sanity, for her memories and forgotten friends. She prayed for atonement and forgiveness and the ability to cast away her sins and filth. She prayed for the truth and acceptance from the people of Oz.

She prayed believing that no one would answer her. She prayed believing that it was useless and a waste of time but unable to stop herself. If praying helped little Nessa why could it not bring some sort of measure of peace to her?

"Elphaba?"

She started at the use of her name but quickly composed herself. Slowly she turned her head around to face the intruder and blinked a couple times to try and clear her mind and focus on the person before her.

_Fiyero.  
_

Her shock overwhelmed her for just a moment before terror coursed through her.

"Elphaba, it's Fiyero."

She tried to feign confusion, as if she did not recognize him. "I beg your pardon, sir?" she said, knowing that Fiyero could see through her lies. He knew who she was but she was determined to send him away. She couldn't face him, not now, not ever again. He was the past and she had driven him out of her mind. To see him now was like opening an old wound – it was simply unbearable.

"Elphie – I'm Fiyero – we were at Shiz," he said. "My splendid Elphie – how are you?"

He had never called her _Elphie_ during their school days. The nickname had been reserved for Glinda's use only, Fiyero had never dared to utter it. So why now? Why was he suddenly falling into the habit of using a nickname for the Witch that he had never used before?

"Sir, I believe you are mistaking me for someone else," the Witch said but she knew that her voice sounded too much like her own and that Fiyero knew it was her. It was too late to hide her identity and that fact made her afraid.

Afraid for Fiyero's life. Afraid for the assault on her mind that the past was causing her. Afraid that she was not strong enough to face him. Her fear made her unfocused and the conversation she continued to have with Fiyero was a hazy memory to her as she desperately tried to send him away. When he finally left the Witch stayed kneeling before the painting of Saint Glinda with no idea of what she should do – what she must do.

A part of her, the part striving for sanity and some sort of meaning to her life, wanted her to go to him. That part wanted the Witch to take him home and let him hold her, comfort her, as she told her story and – for a moment – allowed herself to just be Elphaba again. But the very thought of such a thing made her heart race and her breaths come in short, rapid gasps. She couldn't face what had happened to her since leaving Shiz; it was simply too painful for her frail sanity to try and comprehend. It was easier to ignore it, to push it away and let it fester where – she knew – it would one day destroy her. But for now it was all she could hope to do if she wanted to keep what little sanity she still had remaining.

The Witch could not let Fiyero back into her life. She could not let him show her that she was more than the Wicked Witch; that she was still, underneath it all, Elphaba Thropp – a damaged woman just striving for some measure of peace within herself. The whole idea of facing herself, her used body, and her painful memories, made her panic and her head ache. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths to try and calm herself down but it did not help as she knew that Fiyero was outside waiting for her.

She knew he would not leave.

The Witch stood up suddenly and, instead of leaving the way she came, she ducked out the servants exit in the back of the Chapel and tried, as best as she could, to keep herself hidden in the shadows as she made her way home. She did not know if Fiyero followed her but she dared not sneak a glance back to see and instead made her way home as if she was being followed. She tried her best to make her path as twisted as possible and to stay to as many of the back alleyways as she could until she finally reached the door to the abandoned corn exchange.

She fished for her key and set it in the lock. As she opened the door she heard someone call her, "Fabala," and she turned to face the voice but as she did she realized who had spoken and cursed herself for her stupidity even as she tried to rearrange her expression and feign confusion.

It was too late and the Witch knew it. She had shown that she had answered to her name and that she had recognized it and she knew that Fiyero knew. She hadn't been quick enough, smart enough, clever enough, and before she could slam the door shut and lock it Fiyero's foot was in the way – holding it open.

"Are you in trouble?" he asked and the Witch cursed the Vinkus prince's need to always be there to protect her.

"Leave me alone," the Witch replied, knowing she was pleading but unable to help it. "Please. _Please_."

"You're in trouble, let me in."

"_You're_ trouble. Stay out." Her tone was acid, bitter, but she could not stop herself. She needed him to go, to leave her be, no matter what it took.

"You're making me into a monster," he said as he grunted with the effort it took for him to keep the door open. He hadn't remembered Elphaba to be this strong back at Shiz. "I'm not going to rob you or rape you. I just, won't be ignored like that. Why?"

_Rape you_. The words made the Witch's resolve falter for just a moment and Fiyero fell through the now freely opened door to land against the wall like a clumsy toddler. The Witch stared at him in annoyance. She had given up and he had won – the story of her life.

"I remembered you as full of delicacy and grace," the Witch spat out. "Did you catch something by accident, or did you study awkwardness?"

"Come on," he said; his own annoyance creeping into his tone of voice. "You force someone to behave like a clumping boor, you give them no choice. Don't be so surprised. I can still manage grace. I can do delicacy. Half a minute."

The Witch raised her eyebrows, amused despite herself, but made no response. Fiyero frowned. "Do you live in this stairwell or are we going someplace even a little bit homey?" he asked, sounding hurt.

She cursed and mounted the stairs, wishing that Fiyero would just leave her, but today – like every other day – luck did not shine down upon her. She stared at her feet and tried to ignore the sounds of _his_ feet against the dusty, dirty stairs. She could not. When she opened the door and entered the shabby room she called her home she could practically feel the shock being emitted from Fiyero as he stood, unmoving, behind her.

"So this is home?"

"For me, not you," the Witch snapped. Fiyero's face fell in hurt but she did not see that as her back was facing him. "Malky, Malky," she called and the Cat jumped down from his perch in the rafters to sit on the cooking counter. The Witch poured him a dish of milk. "There's not much," she said to Fiyero. "There's some questionable milk, at least Malky will still drink it."

"Why are you being so cold?"

His question caused the Witch to freeze and she closed her eyes to try and collect her racing thoughts and turbulent emotions. "It's been some time," she muttered. "I've changed since Shiz."

"We all have."

"Sit." The Witch turned around to finally face Fiyero and gave him a small, almost warm, smile as she pointed to the kitchen table. It was littered with scattered papers covered in messy notes from her attempts to decipher the Grimmerie and she quickly collected them and shoved them into the pages of the Grimmerie to attempt some sort of amount of tidiness.

Fiyero sat. "You're agitated."

The Witch shrugged. "There's some ale too, if you'd rather."

"Alcohol?"

"It's not what you think," the Witch quickly retorted. "It's not like it was back at Shiz." She was lying, and Fiyero could tell, but she chose to ignore how easily he could read her. "Here, have some." She pulled the bottle out of the cabinet beneath the cooking counter and grabbed two somewhat clean cups from the same cabinet. She placed them on the table and filled both glasses. Her hands trembled as she held the bottle and she dearly hoped that Fiyero did not notice.

"You're shaking."

The Witch cursed underneath her breath. He _had _noticed. "It's nothing," she said. "There's some bread, and I think cheese… if it hasn't gone moldy."

"It's fine Elphie, I'm not hungry."

The Witch would not be deterred as she found the act of doing something, anything, for more appealing of a notion than simply sitting down and facing Fiyero directly. He was the past and for her that brought far too many repressed memories to the surface. She could not focus on just him without feeling her heart tearing apart at the thought of the life she could have had.

She set the bread and cheese on the table and cut a few slices for Fiyero. She took none herself as she handed the food to him.

"Elphie… please… just sit down. Stop fusing over me."

The Witch sighed and relented. She perched herself on the edge of her chair, as if waiting for the moment to spring into action, and stared at her hands on her lap. The silence stretched on for a few minutes of awkwardness until Fiyero could stand it no longer.

"So you're the Wicked Witch now," he said. "That surprised me."

"The Wizard lies."

"So Glinda has said."

The Witch raised her head at the sound of Glinda's name on Fiyero's lips and her eyes seemed to light up. "How is she?" she asked, almost sounding excited.

Fiyero shrugged. "Fine, as far as I can tell."

The Witch's face fell before she managed to collect it back into her stone-faced mask. "You didn't stay with her?"

"For a time."

"I told you too!" she snapped. She was angry.

"I know."

"You promised!"

"I know… and I'm sorry Elphie but I just… couldn't live that life."

"And now?"

"I'm back home. Husband to the child-bride I was promised too."

"What?" The Witch was shocked. "You didn't… but… Glinda… I thought you would –"

"Marry her? You're not the only one."

The Witch frowned. "You said you would look after her," she whispered.

"And I have. We write often – you'd be impressed at how well she can write now – and I visit her as much as I can. She's doing as well as someone in her position can."

"Is she happy?"

"You know I cannot speak for her on that."

"But does she seem happy?" The Witch leaned forward, waiting for a response. "When you speak to her?"

"Yes… but so did you for most of our times at Shiz."

The Witch nodded and her whole body seemed to slump in defeat. "I hope she is. At least, to some extent."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"You know, happy. Are _you_ happy?"

The Witch didn't respond. Instead she refilled Fiyero's glass even though he had only had a few sips and he didn't really require his glass to be topped off. "Well?" he prodded but there was still no response and he gave up, for the time.

"Eat," the Witch said, pushing his food closer to him. "It will go bad in a few days anyways and I will not finish it all. Eat."

Fiyero grabbed her wrist as she pushed the food near him and before she could even react he had her sleeved pushed up to reveal a freshly scarred green arm. She jerked backwards, pulling herself free of his grasp and nearly toppling out of her chair. She stood up and backed away from him, like a frightened kitten, and hugged her arms around herself for some measure of protection. She glared at him.

"You promised you wouldn't do it," Fiyero whispered. The Witch could tell that he was disappointed.

"I promised I would try!" She hissed out. "Not that it matters anyways because you promised you would stay with Glinda!"

"And that matters?"

"We both broke promises so do not judge me!"

"I'm not judging you." He stood up then and slowly walked around the table to approach her. "But you're in trouble. Let me help you."

"No!"

"Elphie…"

"Stop calling me that!"

"It's your name."

"I don't have a name anymore! I'm _the Witch_, nothing more and everything less!"

Fiyero's face revealed his shock and horror. "You're so much more than that."

The Witch shook her head. "You must go now," she said; pointing a shaking hand towards the door. "You have overstayed your welcome."

"But –"

"We were friends Fiyero but that time is long gone in my life. I have no place for you or the past and you must go before you bring it all back to my memory."

"You cannot just block everything out and pretend it never happened!"

"Go!"

"Elphie! You cannot just cast me away!"

"I can do as I wish!" The Witch stepped forward and grabbed his arm, dragged him to the door. "And do not try to come back! I will move if I have to! I can pick up and be gone in thirty seconds, it is my training after all."

"But Elphie –"

She opened the door and threw him out. He stumbled down the stairs for a few steps before righting himself with the help of the wall. "Leave!" she shrieked. "Let me be!" Then the door was slammed shut and locked and Fiyero simply stood in dumbfounded shock as he tried to comprehend what had just happened. By the time he had collected his thoughts he knew it was far too late to try and talk any sense into Elphaba.

She had changed. She had become colder, harder over the years – something that Fiyero had not thought possible. And she was hurting, more so than during their days together at Shiz, which frightened Fiyero terribly.

The Witch stayed by the door – her hand on the doorknob and her head resting against the worn wood – until she heard Fiyero's footsteps as he left the stairway and, hopefully, her life. She turned around and slowly returned to the table where she sat down in the seat that Fiyero had occupied and stared at the food he had not eaten.

"You deserve some friendships in this life," Malky said from where he still sat on the cooking counter.

"My _friendship_ caused Jay's death!" she spat out. "I cannot allow that to happen again! Not to him! Not to my dear Fiyero!"

Malky watched as the Witch drained Fiyero's glass of ale, then her own, and then got to work trying to decipher the spells of the Grimmerie just to distract herself. She concentrated so hard that her body failed herself and she slipped off the chair – trapped in one of her uncontrollable fits that sent her limbs thrashing and Malky diving for the bed to try and comfort himself. Every time the Witch collapsed into one of her fits the Cat feared that it would be her last – that either the fit itself would kill her or that she would strike her head on something and bleed to death.

The fit came and went, leaving the Witch exhausted and her body drained. She could hardly stand but she managed, just barely, to make her way to her bed where she curled up underneath the thin sheets. Malky came out from where he had hid underneath the rickety bed frame and laid down beside the Witch's heaving chest as she tried to catch her breath.

"Why did you send him away?"

The Witch did not reply to Malky's question as she struggled to forget. Fiyero's visit had sent her mind sprawling down a road of memories so fresh and so painful that she could hardly breathe. The tears pricked the corner of her eyes but she would not allow herself to cry anymore than she would allow herself to sleep.

The Witch spent the night petting Malky and trying, desperately, to lock away the memories that Fiyero had dredged to the forefront of her mind.


	21. Chapter Twenty One

_The Witch spent the night petting Malky and trying, desperately, to lock away the memories that Fiyero had dredged to the forefront of her mind._

--

**Chapter Twenty-One:**

The Witch returned to her home after completing an odd-end assignment for the revolution to find that her solitude protection above the abandoned corn exchange was already occupied.

"Get out," she hissed between clenched teeth as she stood at the door; her hands balled into fists at her side.

"But Elphie –"

"I told you to never come back!"

Fiyero stared at her, his eyes cold and determined, as he sat at the small table. Without a single word he pointed at the neatly organized lines of white powder – left there in preparation when the Witch had left in the morning – at the opposite end from where he sat. "You said it wasn't like it was back at Shiz."

Her mask fell for the briefest of moments but it was all Fiyero needed to see the hurt and regret that lingered just underneath the surface. He stood up then and made his way towards her. He dared to take her in a hug and the act was so completely foreign to the Witch that she stiffened and tried to pull away.

Fiyero would not let her go.

"You don't know," she said, her voice muffled by his chest.

"I know that what you're doing isn't going to help."

She tried to pull away again but Fiyero still would not let her go. "Please," she whispered, pleaded. "Please… you must go."

"I'm worried about you."

"And I'm worried about you associating with me!" She closed her eyes and finally managed to wriggle her way free of Fiyero's grasp. "Please Fiyero, you have a wife… children. You cannot risk your life by visiting me."

"But –"

She sighed and turned her head away. "But if you must stay," she interrupted him, "then ask no questions and I will offer you no lies."

He smiled as he realized that he had won; a small victory but a victory none the less. "Then you will permit me to stay?" he asked.

"For a while then." She walked to the table and slowly, carefully, brushed the white powder into a small bag and tucked it into a hidden pocket within the bosom of her dress. She sat down then and motioned for Fiyero to sit across from her, like he had the time before. "You must never come in the day again," she began – not exactly a promising start to their conversation. "Night only, and on days I say you can. If you come here one more time unannounced then I _will_ pick up and move and you will have no chance to see me again unless it is on the stake of the ignorant people of Oz."

The Witch stared at him, waiting for his response, and dearly wishing he would just leave but she knew that he would not. She was doomed to him now, doomed to be reminded of her past every time she saw him.

"So what of you?" he said, making no indication that he had even heard the rules she had spoken to him. "What have you been up to these – what has it been? – five years since disappearing from all our lives?"

"This and that," the Witch replied; twisting her fingers together in nervousness. "I said no questions."

"I cannot hope to help without at least some measure of understanding."

"I don't need your help."

"Yes you do, you just won't admit it. Like always."

She stared at him; cold eyes in a stoned, expressionless face. "If you knew even a measure of what I have done, what horrors I have been the cause of, you would not be offering me your help."

"You speak but say nothing. You run your words around like a circle that leads to no answers."

"There's a reason for that."

Fiyero let out a heavy sigh and his shoulders slumped slightly in defeat. They lapsed into silence for a while before the Witch could organize her thoughts in a way to form a coherent question. "What do you hear of Boq?" she eventually asked.

The conversation that came then was a blur to the Witch as she tried to keep Fiyero talking to prevent him from asking her any sort of questions that would force her to lie to him. In time she broke out the ale again and they drank in comfortable silence. He asked her a few more questions that she skirted around and she asked more of people she vaguely remembered from her days at Shiz.

"I hope you're not angry at me," Fiyero said, shocking the Witch from her desperate attempt to keep her past locked behind the iron walls of control she had created in her mind.

"Whatever for?" she questioned; sounding as if she was afraid of the answer she would receive.

"I… well… it just happens to be that sometimes… well… more than sometimes…" he stammered.

"Just spit it out."

"Avaric and I tend to cross paths a lot and in time we have become… well… almost friends. I know what he did to you was wrong," he hastily said to interrupt Elphaba as she had opened her mouth to speak. "But he has expressed his… regret over his actions before. I do believe he really feels guilty for what he did to you at Shiz and that he has… matured so to say… since then."

"Matured?" the Witch shrieked. She stood up in anger. "If you knew!" She was furious now. "He… he has… there is no change… he was… he came then… and… you need to leave!"

Fiyero was shocked, baffled. With no knowledge of the terrible life Elphaba had lived under the control of Letozay he had no way of knowing how Avaric had come then to use the Witch for her body just as he had at Shiz. He had no idea how much his confession had hurt the fragile green woman before him. "Elphie… I… I don't understand."

"Go!" She pointed towards the door. "I should never have let you stay! I thought that… that you were… that… but Avaric… and you… friends! I just… you must go!"

He stood up. "Elphie… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"But you have! You _have_ upset me!

"Please… just hear me out."

"Go!" she repeated. The room began to shake, the sun seeming to dull as it shined in threw the window, and her overflowing river of emotions within her was beginning to break through her control. She couldn't stand it, she couldn't bear it, and she needed Fiyero to leave so she could find some way to lock away her feelings again.

He would not leave. He approached her and gently took a hold of the shaking hand that was pointing towards the door and lowered it. She stared at him; trying to find the drunken haze of lust in his eyes that all the men before him had showed her. It was not there.

The Witch pulled away from him and turned around so that her back faced him. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her close. Her back met his chest and she crossed her arms as she tried to adopt an air of annoyance and frustration so that he would leave her. He did not.

"Elphie… please… I'm sorry," Fiyero whispered as he leaned into her, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel his hot breath against her skin. "I didn't mean to anger you. I just… wanted you to know the truth."

"You should be home, with your family," the Witch replied. "Why do you insist on visiting me like this?"

"I want to help you."

"I'm the so-called Wicked Witch of the West!" she spat out. "I cannot be help!"

"Yes you can."

The Witch grabbed his hands and peeled them from her waist. She took his hand in her own and gently led him from her home; down the stairs, out the door, through the street. Malky followed a few steps behind them, scared by the Witch's sudden change in mood, and waited with baited breath for what was to come. He recognized the path they were on – he knew where they were going – and he feared for what would welcome them when they got there.

When the Witch reached her destination she stood before the door in silence for over half an hour. She still held Fiyero's hand.

"Elphie…"

She did not respond to Fiyero's questioning murmur. Instead she reached for the doorknob and gently, quietly, opened the door. The stench that assaulted her nose nearly made her vomit but she held back her natural reaction. She had to pull Fiyero through the house to get him to follow her.

They stood before Jay's bloody, mutilated body. His flesh had begun to rot and maggots and flies had set on it to feed off of his lifeless body. Fiyero had to turn away, cover his mouth with his hand, and swallow back the vomit that had lurched up into his mouth. The Witch was shocked that no one, not a single person, had come to take his body away and claim the house.

Malky tucked his tail between his back legs and simply watched. He was unsure of the Witch's motives for bringing Fiyero here and he was afraid that she was trying to push him away; trying to scare him into leaving her for good.

"This was my fault," the Witch whispered. Fiyero did not respond. He still could not turn around to truly look at Jay's broken body without the fear of expelling the lunch he had ate before arriving at Elphaba's home.

"My fault," the Witch repeated. "He killed himself because of me… because he loved me and all I did was use him for my own selfish needs."

"Elphie…"

"I was envious of him," the Witch whispered, "because he had the strength to do what I cannot."

Fiyero finally turned around to look at Elphaba in horror. "You… you're not… are you?"

"I still have sins to atone for," the Witch replied. "And until then I will suffer through this nightmare that is my life."

"You… _want_ to die?"

"I would not despair if my work in the revolution kills me," she said. She turned to look at him then, and for a moment her mask was gone to reveal the swirling emotions in her eyes. But then it was back again and Fiyero was doubtful it had ever been gone to begin with. She reached into her pocket, Fiyero watched, and pulled out a box of matches.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She dropped her head slightly to stare at Jay's body through a curtain of loose black hair that she had forgotten to tie back. "He deserves more than to have his body rot away, eaten by maggots and flies. I just… cannot do anything more than this." She struck the match, let it fall from her hands to land on Jay, and watched as his rotting flesh lit on fire almost instantly.

They fled then – the three of them – and stood on the street as the old, dilapidated house began to burn. The Witch draped a shawl she procured from her coat pocket over her head and slipped on her gloves to better hide her green skin; the beacon of what she was. Malky sat at her feet and meowed in fright. She picked him up, held him close to her chest, and slowly petted him to calm him down. The fire frightened the Cat just like it would frighten any Animal – or animal.

The grief tore through the Witch then. Ripping at her soul and shattering her heart. She closed her eyes and fell to her knees, clutching Malky tightly and burying her head in his soft fur. She choked back sobs and didn't pull away as Fiyero kneeled down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He held her close but as the fire grew bigger he knew they had to leave. Malky, sensing that they needed to flee, squirmed his way out of the Witch's grasp.

Fiyero scooped her thin frame up in his arms and she shrunk into the warmth his body provided her. She fell into a listless, almost-sleep as he carried her back to her home – ignoring the strange looks that he received – and struggled up the small stairwell. He set her on her bed and tucked her dirty sheets around her trembling, cold body. He dragged a chair from the table to her bedside and sat down; watching her, protecting her.

She opened her eyes to look up at him. She felt the tug of… _something_… inside of her. Was it love? She couldn't tell. She had been so long without any sense of true feelings that to experience so many in such a short time was overwhelming. Kimber's murder and Jay's suicide had filled her with grief and suffocating guilt while Fiyero's reappearance in her life had made her feel somewhat alive when all she wanted was to feel empty.

"I'm sorry," Fiyero whispered, "for losing him like that."

"Remember when… back at Shiz… I broke the looking glass, tried to kill myself with it?" the Witch asked; it was the first time she had voluntarily relived a memory of her past in years. It felt… odd.

Fiyero nodded. He couldn't find his voice to answer.

"I never realized, until Jay did it, how much it hurts the ones around you." She frowned at the memory, at the pain she had caused. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

The Witch nodded, letting her eyes slide closed, and soon found herself slipping into a fitful sleep. She felt comfortable, protected, with Fiyero near and she couldn't help but relish in the affection he was showering her with. It felt… different. _He_ felt different. He wasn't like the other men she had wasted away her nights with. He seemed, as far as she could tell, like he really did care.

The Witch, however, could not shake the last thread of terror that still squeezed the life out of her barely beating heart.


	22. Chapter Twenty Two

_The Witch, however, could not shake the last thread of terror that still squeezed the life out of her barely beating heart._

--

**Chapter Twenty-Two:**

She sat at the lone table in her small house and watched her hands shake as they rested on the tabletop. She was naked and trembling and her hair was a matted mess that smelled of sex and human sweat. Her mind was racing and she could feel the tears throbbing behind her eyes.

"He's not going to come back," she muttered and Malky looked up at her in concern from where he laid on the crumpled sheets of her bed. "They never come back," she continued.

"You don't know that."

"He's not coming back." Her words were full of finality as she forced herself to simply accept that Fiyero, like all the other men in her life, had simply wanted her body. "He got what he came for and now he is gone." She stood up; busied herself with a pan and a few eggs that he had brought over and left behind. "I was foolish to hope that he would want more than just sex."

"Fae…"

"He's a man… and just like all other men he thinks with his dick first!" she spat out, slamming the pan down against the hot burner. She grabbed a stained cloth that was left near the cooking top and pressed it against her eyes, tried to still her tears, and then blew her nose. She felt dirty, used, but a part of her felt – in love.

She was scared, afraid. Terrified that she had opened up painful wounds for a chance at healing to get nothing in return. The Witch struggled to breathe around the lump in her throat and forced herself not to cry. She couldn't allow herself to cry. Crying meant she had been hurt and she refused to believe that Fiyero had hurt her.

But he had.

She gave up on cooking the eggs and let them burn in the pan as the fire within the cooking stove slowly burnt itself out. She stood still, idle, in the middle of her tiny home and begged for some sort of relief from the pain that was choking her. The Witch felt betrayed and it hurt. It hurt _so_ _damn_ _much_ that she could not even function. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed into nothingness – like Fiyero had shattered it by melting into her advances.

_Her advances_. She had initiated the act; pressed him against the smooth wood of the wall before they collapsed together on her worn bed. They had become a puzzle of green skin and dark brown. Two bodies becoming one in the heat of the act. She had started it all and with that realization she knew that it was her fault. She had given in to Fiyero's desires and now he no longer needed her. If she had simply kept her distance and made sure that their friendship had remained only friendly then he would still be here with her.

It was her fault. Like always the Witch found her disaster of a life to be caused by her and her herself. She could not put the blame on anyone else, no matter how much she wanted to. It was simply just her fault.

"Fae?"

Malky's voice shocked the Witch from her frozen stupor and she shook her head, tried to clear her thoughts. She stumbled towards the table, sat down. She laid her head down on the splintering wood and let the coolness of it comfort her. Her soul was struggling to break free from the cage she had enclosed it in. The feel of Fiyero's warm body had awakened a spark of hope and life in her that terrified her. She had no ability to deal with such feelings and she feared that Fiyero would not return to help her.

But she could not lock them away again. It was too late for that. Her soul had experience a glimmer of life again and it would no longer allow itself to be held behind its iron cage anymore. She could not control it. She could not lock it away. She could not pretend that she was not who she was anymore.

Fiyero had made her feel like _Elphaba_ again; and it felt… good.


	23. Chapter Twenty Three

_Fiyero had made her feel like _Elphaba_ again; and it felt… good._

--

**Chapter Twenty-Three:**

Fiyero found her in a puddle of vomit and blood and her eyes were hazy with the remnants of the drugs she had taken. She had crawled underneath her table – he couldn't fathom why – where she had proceeded to hack away at her arms with a small kitchen knife before the drugs and alcohol overwhelmed her body and she had became sick.

It was a pitiful sight when he thought about it but he tried not to because it hurt too much to think about it too hard.

He crawled underneath the table and sat down beside her shivering, curled up form. She had her knees hugged to her chest as she sat in the pool of blood and vomit and Fiyero didn't even think twice about sitting in the same pool of blood-red vomit if it would help to comfort her. It didn't for she could not recognize him and for many long minutes he sat beside her in silence as she desperately tried to breathe. His heart ached for her and the pain she must be dealing with to fall so low.

"Fiyero?"

He turned his head at her quiet voice. She looked up at him, eyes still hazy and unfocused, but seemed to comprehend who he was. He took a green hand in his own and squeezed it gently. She found comfort in the touch. "You came back," she whispered. He looked at her in confusion. "They never come back," she continued as she dropped her head. "Never."

"Elphie?"

"I thought you wouldn't either."

"Of course I would."

"You got your sex," she muttered; she was talking to herself. "Why would you come back?"

He looked horrified. "That's not what I came back to you for."

"It's what they all come for." If she was in a sober frame of mind she would not have been saying what she was but as the situation came to be she was still suffering from the after effects of the drugs and alcohol. She could not control the words she spoke. "It's all they ever want."

Fiyero didn't say a word; he could not find his voice to speak. Instead he wrapped his arm around Elphaba's shoulders and pulled her close. She rested her head against his shoulder. "Thank you," she muttered as her eyes slid shut, "for… for coming back."

He nodded but the Witch didn't see the action. She fell, slowly, into a fitful sleep full of hazy memories and foggy images that resembled the night-terrors she usually suffered through during the rare times she allowed sleep to overtake her. Fiyero gently squirmed himself and Elphaba out from underneath the table and set the sleeping green woman down on her bed. Her hair was matted and her clothes soaked with her own blood and vomit. He looked around to try and find something to still the flow of blood that seeped from the deep wounds she had gouged into her arms but he found nothing but an old, stained blanket. He sighed and tore off long strips from the bottom of his own shirt and tied them tightly around her wounds. It helped, but only slightly.

If she had running water and could abide by such liquid he would have set on washing the blood-stained vomit from her skin and hair but as it was she had no water nor could such a thing be allowed to touch her skin. He settled then for searching the small home until he found a mostly-empty bottle of oils that he could only assume were her cleaning oils in the cupboard beneath the cooking counter. He sat down beside Elphaba's sleeping form and gently undid the clasps of her dress and slid it off over her head. Elphaba murmured something incomprehensible as Fiyero began to rub the oil over her skin and then wipe it off with a cloth he had found in the sink.

The Witch jerked awake as his hands crept down to her thighs. She screamed in terror and drug-induced panic as she pulled away from Fiyero's touch. He let her squirm backwards on the bed until she was sitting with her back against the wall and the thin bedding clutched around her naked form. "What are you doing!" she shrieked; horrified at the thought that he might have seen the scars on her thighs that marked her for what she was.

But he hadn't. The darkness of the room and the lack of moonlight had hid her scars and he had no idea of why Elphaba was reacting like she was. He reached towards her but she shrunk away from him and he dropped his hand. "Elphie…" he breathed. "What is wrong?"

The Witch closed her eyes; took in a few deep, shaky breaths. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just… you can't… there's no… I cannot permit you… and… there's… you'd be… it's disgusting… and I just won't… you can't… you just can't!"

"What is it?"

"You can't and you can't!" She opened her eyes to glare at him; held the blanket tighter around her body. "And that is all there is to it!"

He nodded, seeming to understand that he was not going to be permitted to touch her below the waist. Not naked and not now; not ever. He handed her the bottle of oil, accepting the conditions she was laying down without actually telling him those conditions. Fiyero just knew, and Elphaba was glad for it.

"You should go," the Witch whispered and Fiyero knew not to argue. He nodded and leaned forward, laid a brief kiss on her lips, before leaving the modest home of the Wicked Witch a mere hour before the sun rose on the morrow.

She watched him leave, a broken smile on a cracked face as she felt the hope blooming inside of her. It had been so long since she felt this… alive. Even the stinging of the wounds on her arms was dull to the emotions swarming inside of her. She felt her strength coming back; in waves that overwhelmed her and choked the very breath from her but made the life shine in her brown eyes again.

The Witch felt alive.


	24. Chapter Twenty Four

_The Witch felt alive._

--

**Chapter Twenty-Four:**

She found, surprisingly, that she enjoyed food. Fiyero brought her treats often; small cakes and tarts that danced on her taste buds and settled quite comfortably in her stomach. She gained a little weight and filled out her thin dress with the slight return of her womanly curves. She laughed again, a pleasant sound laced with a glimmer of true happiness. Fiyero shared stories of his life; both in the Vinkus and his clumsy attempts at fitting in during his stays in the Emerald City. He enjoyed making Elphaba laugh and went out of his way to do such a thing.

He loved her smile too. It was small, almost shy-like, and he knew it was because she dared not let herself truly smile. Not yet anyways. He did not mind though as he could see her eyes light up when she was happy and that was more than any smile could give him. She enjoyed his visits – even the ones that ended in arguments over her lifestyle and the dangers that it entailed.

Fiyero hated coming to her home on the appointed nights only to find that she was not there due to some duty of the revolution that had dragged her away. She was still torn by the guilt of both Kimber and Jay's death and Fiyero could see that. She spoke little of them but when she did the grief that pooled in her eyes made Fiyero's heart ached – he couldn't stand it.

"Just because I'm hurting doesn't mean I'm hurt," she had said one night, when the revolution's work had made her late for their meeting. Fiyero had looked at her in loving acceptance as they both let the meaning of what Elphaba had said sink in.

He bought her two dresses; one black and one a dark, charcoal gray. They were simple frocks but made of thick fabric – sturdy and warm. Elphaba had been overwhelmed with the gift and nearly cried as she thanked him over and over again.

The love they shared was strong but even as he held her night after night Elphaba still could not come to accept her past. She often found herself sitting at the table, when Fiyero was not around, twirling the green looking glass in her hand. It kept showing her Nessa, as if she was meant to learn something from the image of her little sister, and it pained her. She wanted to see something else, she _needed _to see something else, but day after day all she saw was little crippled Nessa. It scared her.

The next time Fiyero came to visit she would not let him in. She held the door adjured just enough to send him away for over two weeks. He was angry, furious even, but did not argue. He knew the futility of fighting with her – she always won.

That night she mounted her enchanted broom in the shadows behind the abandoned corn exchange. It flew for her, and she was ecstatic. She flew at night, slept during the day, and in time found herself at the window to her sister's room all the way out in Nest Hardings. She crawled within it, hid herself in the large closet, and waited.

The Witch didn't know why she was there or what she hoped to attain by seeing her sister but her decision had been driven by the images in the looking glass that was, but not quite, a memory of dear old Turtle Heart. She waited with baiting breath for hours until the door was opened and in wheeled her sister. She gasped in surprise – Nessa looked so much older, _was_ so much older. It shocked her.

The Witch opened the closet and stepped out. Nessa squealed and nearly fell out of her chair. "What are you doing here?" she questioned, shrieked really.

"Nessa please… you have to help me." The Witch was surprised at how easily she fell into pleading as this was not the course she had planned to take. "You need to ask father to stand with me, please."

"That's impossible." Nessa sounded cold, angry.

"No it's not!" The Witch kneeled down beside Nessa's chair. "Not if you ask him! He'll do anything for you!"

"Father cannot help you Elphaba… I'm the Emminent Thropp now."

The Witch was stunned into silence. "What?" she asked, her breath stolen from her.

"Do you not approve?"

"But… father… what happened?"

"He's sick Elphaba… and I took over for him since you disappeared from our lives!" She was bitter, the Witch could hear it in her voice. "And you left us all alone! You left me without a single word or letter! How could you do such a thing!"

The Witch stood up, turned her back to her sister so that Nessa would not see the guilt in her eyes. "I didn't want you to get tangled up with my life," she whispered. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"Yet you show up here! If you're seen we will all be killed! Did you think of that?"

"There's someone you know," the Witch said. "He has… tangled himself up with me. And I fear that I will… get him killed." She turned to face Nessa then. "Please… you have to help me! If only to help him!"

"Why should I help you?" Nessarose screamed. "You fly around Oz helping Animals you've never even met! And not _once_ have you thought to use your powers to help me!"

"My magick is mysterious! I cannot control it even if I tried! It's not like cobbling up a pair of –" The Witch trailed off as a shaky idea formed in her mind. She pulled the Grimmerie out of her bag – she had brought it only because it made her feel somewhat self-confident – and kneeled on the Quoxwood floor. She flipped through the book, not quite sure she knew what she was looking for, and hoping for the spell she needed to simply appear to her.

And it did. She began to chant, feeling the power surging through her, and focused her energy as best as she could towards her sister's jeweled shoes. Nessa squealed in terror and begged Elphaba to stop but the Witch would not. It was too late to stop because she knew if she did then the half-spell she had uttered would end in disaster.

When she was done she leaned back on her heels and stared up at her sister. Nessa looked at her in confusion. "What did you do to my shoes?" she shrieked.

"Try," the Witch whispered; not daring to utter the word 'walk' in case her spell had failed.

Nessa lifted herself off her chair, keeping her eyes locked on her sister, and stood, shakily, on her feet. She fell to the ground, too weak to stay standing. The Witch moved to offer her assistance to her little sister.

"Don't help me," Nessa said; too shocked by the reality of what was happening to say anything more.

The Witch did not directly help her sister but she kept her hands out as Nessa struggled to stand again. Then the younger Thropp sister took a step, and another. And another. Elphaba stood up then and smiled. "Finally," she whispered. "Finally! With these powers I have actually done something good! Oh, Nessie! Why didn't I do this years ago?"

Nessarose was far too wrapped up in her own excitement to hear the words her sister spoke. So Elphaba just watched in complete, true happiness as Nessa took her first trembling steps of her life. Nessa looked at her older sister. "Thank you," she said. "Oh, Elphaba! Thank you!"

She hugged Elphaba. For the Witch it was the first time she could ever recall that her sister had embraced her. That her sister… _loved_ her.

The Witch felt the tears in her eyes and she forced herself to blink them back. "I'm so happy for you," she whispered.

Nessa pulled away from her sister and looked up at her. "I can't believe… you could… you… that… there's… that you have that much power within you!" She was ecstatic. "You made me walk!"

Elphaba could not help but smile.

"Come with me," Nessa said as she took Elphaba's hand. She struggled to walk, leaning heavily on her sister for balance, as she led the green Witch out of her room and down the hall. They entered a room at the end of the hall where the Witch froze at the sight of the man laying in the bed.

"Father?" the Witch questioned. Nessa pushed off of Elphaba and nearly tripped but caught herself on the edge of the bed.

"Father!" Nessa squealed. "Father! Look!"

Frex opened his eyes and reached for his glasses on the nightstand. He put them on and stared at Nessa. He sat up in fear. "What are you doing?" he asked in concern. "Where's your chair?"

"Look at what Elphaba did for me! She helped me! She used her powers to… to help me walk! Aren't you excited?"

Frex coughed, a sign of his failing health, and squinted through his glasses. He slowly turned his head from Nessa to Elphaba. "You did this?" he asked his oldest daughter. "For… for Nessa?"

The Witch nodded.

"For all of us!" Nessa said. "Oh, father! Just think of what I can do now! I can walk!"

Frex looked at Elphaba with cold, calculating eyes. "You could have done this a long time ago, couldn't you have?" he spat out. "Why did you wait so long? Why did you choose to do it now? Do you want something? You must want something!"

The Witch looked hurt. "Father… I… if I had known I could do this before I would have! But… I didn't know. My powers… they come and go. Most of the time I cannot even fly my broom!"

Frex slowly slid out of his bed and made his way to his eldest daughter, pushing Nessa out of his path. He stood mere inches from her and realized that he had either shrunk with old age or she had simply grown taller. As she was, dressed in all black and with her green skin standing out in stark contrast to her clothing, Elphaba looked everything like the imposing Wicked Witch that the Wizard had labeled her as.

He struck her. The Witch stumbled backwards a few feet as his backhand, weaker than it used to be, still stung her cheek and left a bitter feeling in her heart. "Father?" she questioned, her lower lip trembling with the effort it was taking her not to cry.

"You could have done this years ago! All of her suffering! All of Nessa's pain! You could have taken that away years and years ago!"

The Witch closed her eyes, trying to keep her tears under control. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "Really father… if I had known that I could –"

"Stop this father!" Nessa reached for Frex's arm and grabbed a hold of it, stopping him from striking her elder sister again. "She helped me! Can't you give her that?"

"And she could have done it years ago!"

"Does it matter?" Nessa cried out. "Can't you just be proud of her for once?"

Frex whirled around to face Nessa but the action was too fast for his failing health; his vision spun and his head began to ache. His body slumped as unconsciousness crept over him and Elphaba instinctively reached forwards and caught him. He was heavier than she expected and her weak body could barely hold him but she managed. She scooped him up in her arms and laid him down on his bed. He blinked weakly up at her.

"It was wrong of me to come here," the Witch said. "I'm sorry father. I've done the best I can and still it is not enough."

"Elphaba… don't listen to him!" Nessa was horrified. "Look… I'll… I'll stand up for you. I'll clear your name! You won't have to live in hiding anymore!"

The Witch shook her head. "You cannot do that for me," she said. "It was a ridiculous thing for me to ask of either of you. I don't know why I thought I should, I don't know why I ever thought it could work. It was foolish of me. _I'm_ foolish."

"Elphaba!"

"I'm sorry for failing you again," the Witch said to her father.

"Elphaba!"

"I'm going to go now."

"But Elphaba!"

"I have unfinished business back in the Emerald City," she said as she finally turned to look at her sister. "I'm glad I could help you Nessie but my worth has run its course."

"Elphaba!"

The Witch turned on her heel, returned to Nessarose's room. The younger Thropp daughter followed as quickly as she could but she was still unsteady on her feet and she fell into a crumpled heap of weak legs and a trembling body in the hall. The Witch did not turn around to help her, she could not. She knew that if she did that she would not be able to leave her again. So she focused on her task; grabbing her broom and making for the window.

"Elphaba!" Nessa had managed to stand up and was at the door now, looking at her sister with pleading eyes. "Please! You… you don't understand! You don't know how… how hurt I was by you abandoning me! Please! You can't go again! You just can't!"

The Witch didn't turn around. "I have to," she said as she stared out the window. "I should never have come here, I should never have tried to get you tangled up in my life."

"But you helped me to walk!"

"That was a happy accident," the Witch replied; her voice was shaking. "I have no control over my magick. It comes and goes of its own will."

"But Elphaba!"

"Forget I ever came. I am disaster… I am failure. I need to go now, before anyone sees me here."

"Don't leave!"

The Witch closed her eyes as she laid a hand on the window frame. "Please Nessie… don't make this any harder than it has to be."

"No!" Nessa screamed as she ran, stumbled, to Elphaba's side and grabbed her arm. "You cannot go! I refuse to let you leave! Not again!"

"You're acting like a child Nessa, let me go."

"Because I _am_ a child!"

The Witch froze and turned around to face her little sister. "You're the Emminent Thropp now, not a child."

"You're supposed to be the Emminent Thropp! Not me!"

"I would fail at it, just like I fail at everything else. You know that."

"No you wouldn't!"

"Nessa please… let go of my arm."

"No!"

"Nessa!" The Witch's voice was curt and full of annoyance. "Let me go!"

"I don't want you to go! You left me… just like mother did! I refuse to let that happen again! I refuse to be abandoned again!"

The Witch's eyes softened as she looked at her sister. "Nessie… try to understand. I'm not leaving you just to leave you. I'm leaving you to protect you. I don't want you to be hurt by my life. I'm trying to save you."

"I don't want your protection! I want _you_!"

"No!" The Witch pulled her arm free of Nessarose's grasp as if her sister's touch had burnt her. "I'm going now and you cannot stop me."

"Don't you want to stay? Don't you want to be free of this ridiculous title that the Wizard has given you?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then stay!"

"All your help cannot save me! All your pretty words and pitiful attempts to clear my name will do nothing! Don't you see? You're just the Emminent Thropp – he's the Wizard! _The Wizard_!"

"But Elphaba!"

"No Nessie! Just… just no! I've given you all that I have… all that I can give you. Trust in yourself. You've done fine without me and you'll continue to do fine without me."

"But… but…"

"Please Nessie… don't drag this out anymore than it has to be." The Witch pulled herself out onto the window ledge.

"Elphaba!"

The Witch was gone. She mounted her broom and flew off into the sky with the sound of Nessarose's cries for her echoing in her head. She flew for four days straight, not caring who saw her in the sky, until she half-landed, half-crashed into the back alley behind her home in the darkness of the night. She stumbled up the stairway, clutching her broom in her hand, and collapsed in exhaustion as soon as she entered the one-room house she called her home. She was unconscious before she hit the ground – too tired to even make her way to her bed.


	25. Chapter Twenty Five

_She was unconscious before she hit the ground – too tired to even make her way to her bed._

--

**Chapter Twenty-Five:**

Fiyero found her the next night as she was huddled underneath the thin sheets of her bed. She looked like she was about to cry with both despair and joy at the same time. He sat down beside her and she shrunk into his warm body. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No questions and I'll tell you no lies," she said. Fiyero nodded and fell silent. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and she shrunk even further into his hold. "Don't leave me," she murmured. "I love you too much. You don't understand Yero… Yero my hero."

Fiyero's heart melted at the nickname. "I'm not going anywhere," he whispered into her ear.

"You just don't know how much you've helped me."

He kissed her then. And their bodies became one as they intertwined together underneath her sheets. He knew when she was agitated; her lovemaking was far more fierce and rough when her emotions were barely being contained behind her iron-will. It seemed as if she was using the act of sex to expel all her anger and fury. It scared him a little, but he never broached the subject. He feared she was still not ready for such a thing.

When they were finished they laid together, face to face, chests heaving. Fiyero tangled his hand in her hair. "Down at the betting parlor I heard some interesting rumours," he said.

"Mh?"

"The young Emminent Thropp – Miss Nessarose – can walk now. I happy miracle some are saying. A great magickal spell by Glinda the Good others say. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Elphaba shrugged. "No questions, no lies," she murmured as her eyes slid shut. She was tired from the fierce effort she had put into their lovemaking.

"You weren't working for the revolution these past weeks, were you?" His hand slid down her back, over the curve of her hip. "You went to Nest Hardings, didn't you? You visited your sister… helped her, didn't you?"

A shrug and an incomprehensible murmur was all he got in response. He sighed, letting his hand slid down the side of her leg – forgetting, for a moment, that he was not supposed to touch her there. However, the Witch herself seemed not to notice as she melted further into his body. He kissed her, a kiss that lingered on her lips as she unconsciously let her legs part slightly. His hand slid between her thighs and, to his shock, gently caressed over the many scars that Letozay and his paying customers had dug into her soft flesh. Fiyero's hand froze and his lips pulled away from hers. Elphaba opened her eyes and stared at him in confusion for a moment until she realized where his hand was on her body, what he could feel. He had dropped his gaze to stare at her naked body, the blankets had fallen from the bed hours ago, and the Witch followed his gaze to find that he could see – due to the moonlight that shined in through the window – the scars as clearly as he could feel them.

Elphaba's eyes widened in horror and she pushed him away. He tumbled off the bed and landed harshly on the wooden floor. "No!" she shrieked, grasping for the corner of the bed sheet that had tangled around the bed frame. She pulled it from the floor, wrapped it around her naked body, as she scooted backwards so that she hid in the corner between the two walls that the bed was shoved against. "You weren't! I told you! You were never! You shouldn't have seen! I told you not to!" she screamed, frantic.

Fiyero stared at her as realization began to settle in his mind. He was naïve, to some extent, but he was not _that_ naïve about the world. He had been to enough clubs, enough betting parlors, full of drunken men and scarcely dressed woman, to know what those scars meant. "You sold yourself," he stated simply, in shock. He wasn't quite sure why he was so shocked for she had done the very same thing back at Shiz.

_But it was not that severe,_ he reasoned with himself as he recalled how many scars had marked her thighs. _It was never that many men._

"No!" the Witch shrieked. "No and no! You must go now! And never come back!"

He stood up, slowly, made his way back to the bed but Elphaba bolted from it; ran to the other side of the table. "You have ruined it!" she continued to scream. "You have gone and ruined it all! You need to go!" She pointed at the door with one hand as her other one clutched the bedding around her body – hiding her scars from him.

"Elphaba, Fabala, Fae," he whispered, making his way towards her. She ran from him, back towards the bed.

"Go! I am disgusting! You must go!"

"Fae…"

"Do you know how long?" she shrieked, terrified. "Two years! Maybe even three! I cannot remember anymore! He locked me in that damn room! Night after night they came! Men and women! Doing anything they wanted to me! _Anything_!" She hoped to send him away with the disgusting facts of what had been done to her. "I am used Fiyero! I am trash! I do not deserve you and you must go now!"

"Elphaba…" He reached for her; she skirted around his grasp and bolted to the cooking counter.

"I meet a need Fiyero! Nothing more! I am a person good only for sex! Don't you see? I am a whore!"

Then it all came together. The sick, sordid puzzle of her life seemed to fall into place in Fiyero's mind. Why she had never allowed him to come during the day. Why he wasn't allowed to touch her below her waist. Why she had been so utterly terrified that he would not come back after their first time together.

Why she was hurting so very, very much.

He reached for her, caught her as she tried to flee from him. He pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her lower back and her chest met his. He buried his head in her hair. "You were raped," he whispered as he took in the intoxicating smell of her hair all riled up by sex. "I do not judge you for that, who could?"

She tried to squirm away from him but he was too strong and he would not let her go. "I chose it," she muttered; her voice choked by her barely suppressed sobs. "At first I… I did it by choice."

"You did it in desperation."

"But I chose it!" She refused to believe him, refused to put the blame of her life on anyone else. "It was me and only me! I failed Fiyero! I became the whore because I _chose_ too!"

He led her to the bed, laid her down. The blanket fell from her trembling body and he locked his eyes with hers as his hand traced over the scars on her thighs. "Did you choose to be locked in a room? Did you choose for those men to scar you like they did?"

"My choices led to that!" she shrieked, trying to get away but he would not let her go.

He let his gaze fall over her body. She felt bare in front of him as he seemed to be treating her now like all the other men had treated her. The lust in his eyes scared her a little but she was frozen by her fear and her shame. She could not move and he seemed to sense that. He lowered his head down to her thighs, slowly kissing the scars there. She shuddered and stared at the rafters before closing her eyes to try and stop her tears.

She could not.

They sneaked out of her eyes, trailing down the sides of her face and burning her skin. Fiyero looked up at her and brought his hands to her face. His hips settled on top of hers but not in any indication of sex – he simply wanted to be near her, to comfort her. He placed both his hands on the sides of her face and wiped the burning tears away with his thumbs. "You don't understand," she choked out, her eyes still closed. "You just don't. You can't. You never will."

"They raped you Fabala. No matter what you think, or what choices you made before then, they forced themselves upon you."

"No…" Her voice was weak and lacked the strength she prided herself on.

"Look at me," Fiyero ordered. "Open your eyes and look at me." She did. "I love you," he whispered. "I love every part of you. Green skin, secrets, scars, and all."

She shook her head. "You can't!" she screamed. He held her still even as she tried to thrash her way out of his grasp. She looked deranged – half insane – but even so Fiyero would not leave her. Not now, he loved her far too much to abandon her in such a desperate state. So he kept her pinned against the bed but it terrified her; reminding her of all the times she had been pinned against a bed, a wall, a street, and used for nothing but her body.

"They cut me open!" she shrieked. "They were drunk and they took a knife, splitting me open like some piece of meat just to… to use me!"

Fiyero's eyes were full of despair as he held her down. He was trying to keep her from harming herself but she was getting stronger as he was getting weaker. She was getting more energy, more fight in her, while he was growing more and more exhausted.

"Fae…"

"I am not a woman!" the Witch screamed at him. "I am not a person! I am a tool! I am an object! I do a job! Provide a service! There is nothing more to me than that! I will never be anything more than a whore!" She threw him off of her then; scrambled from the bed. She grasped for the blanket but Fiyero was quicker and grabbed it, trying to keep it from her. She ran to the other side of the kitchen table, trying to keep something between herself and Fiyero. "You must go now! You need to leave me be! You _need_ to go!"

"Fabala…" He made his way to the opposite side of the table and simply looked at her. "Fae…"

"You will never understand!" she shrieked. "Now go!" She pointed at the door with a shaking hand.

"Fae please… try to calm down."

"Go!"

"I'm not going anywhere!" he screamed at her, regretting raising his voice as soon as he saw the hurt in her eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," he said quickly but she backed away from him. "I didn't mean to yell."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Go," she whispered. "Please… you have to go and never come back. You saw and you know and you have ruined it all!"

"It's not ruined Elphie. I don't care. Don't you understand? You were raped! That wasn't your fault! I don't blame you for it! I don't find you disgusting because of it!"

The Witch snapped her eyes open. "Go!" she screamed but even as the words left her mouth her body began to fail her. The emotions swarming inside of her overwhelmed her frail body and she had worked herself into a frenzy so fierce that she collapsed into a heap of green on the floor. She fell into the grip of one of her physical fits that took away her control of her body. Fiyero flew into action. Pushing the kitchen table and chairs out of the way and kneeling down beside her; placing his hands on the sides of Elphaba's face – trying to keep her head still to protect her head and neck. Her limbs thrashed about and her breaths came out in choked, shallow gasps. Her eyes were wide with fear and panic as the fit stole away her control of herself for just over seven long minutes.

When her body finally calmed down she found herself covered in sweat that stung her skin. Fiyero scooped up her now exhausted body in his arm and laid her on her bed. He took a relatively clean cloth from the cooking counter and used it to gently dab the sweat from her brow. She looked up at him with hazy eyes and simply watched as he worked on trying to get the stinging sweat off of her body. She raised a heavy hand to grab his wrist as his hand got dangerously close to her thighs. He looked at her in concern.

"Please," she muttered. "Just… don't."

Fiyero nodded and let the cloth fall to the floor. He crawled next to her naked, trembling frame and she shrunk into his body. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, and she buried her head into the soft flesh of his chest.

She cried.

The Wicked Witch finally gave into her carefully held back emotions. She sobbed. Big, fat, wet tears that burnt her face and traced salty paths down Fiyero's chest. She let the years of pain and horrible memories that haunted her dreams pour out of her as she felt like a blubbering toddler. Elphaba's body shook terribly as her pain overwhelmed her and Fiyero held her tighter, closer, and whispered nonsense words in a comforting tone to try and calm her down.

"I'm filthy," Elphaba choked out. "How can you stand to be near me?"

"You're _not_ filthy."

"Do you know how many men have touched my body? Do you know how many men, and… and women, have used me? Have been… inside of me! My body is already mutilated beyond anything recognizable of a woman's body… and that is filthy enough on its own! But… the men. There were _so_ many Fiyero. _So many_!"

"It's okay," Fiyero whispered. "It's going to be okay. I'm here now. I'll help you. It's going to be okay."

She raised her head, kissed him. She let the tears fall down her face as her mind sent her back in time to the years she was locked in Letozay's house. To the nights of terror and rape that shook her to her very core. "So many men," she muttered as her eyes slid shut and she shrunk back into Fiyero's hold. "You could never know."

"It's going to be okay."

"You don't know that."

"Calm down," he whispered. "I'm going to be right here, I'm not leaving you, okay?"

Elphaba nodded and in time her choking sobs calmed down and the force of her tears seemed to lessen in severity. Fiyero held her long into the night, even after she had fallen into a fitful sleep, and simply watched her – protected her. His heart ached for the pain she lived with, for the memories that haunted her. He could not fathom how she still functioned, how she had not succumbed to the insanity that was so close to consuming her soul. She had a strength he could never image attaining.

"You're so strong Fae," Fiyero whispered to the sleeping green form he held in his arms. "I only wish you could see it in yourself."


	26. Chapter Twenty Six

_"You're so strong Fae," Fiyero whispered to the sleeping green form he held in his arms. "I only wish you could see it in yourself."_

--

**Chapter Twenty-Six:**

Elphaba awoke with a start to find herself in Fiyero's comforting arms. For a moment she couldn't remember what had happened until the horrible memories of what had occurred the night before came flooding back into her mind. She shuddered and tried to pull away from the arms around her but even in his sleep Fiyero would not let her go.

"Fiyero?" she asked quietly, trying to wake him. The sun was shining high in the sky and for some reason she felt she needed to be somewhere, she just could not remember where.

"Mh?" he replied sleepily, not yet awake enough to open his eyes.

"Why are you still here?"

"Because I love you," he muttered.

"I need to go." Her words became more urgent as her desire to get away from his suffocating presence grew stronger with each passing second.

He blinked weary eyes at her. "Why the rush?" he asked as he tried to will away the last remnants of his sleep.

"The revolution."

"Forget about them for a day. Let today just be for us."

"I can't Fiyero, I have a job to do. I cannot let them down."

"But Fae…"

"Fiyero, I need to go."

He frowned but relented and let her go. She sat up, slowly, and stared at him in no small amount of pain. "You know," she whispered.

He cocked his head at her and watched as she slid off the bed and grabbed her dress from where it laid crumpled on the floor. "Is that such a bad thing?" he asked her.

She slid her dress on and pulled a bottle out from the cabinet under the cooking counter. "Knowing that I'm a whore?" she replied bitterly. "Of course it is!" She took a swig out of the bottle she held, slammed it down on the table.

"A little early to start drinking, don't you think?"

"Stay out of my life!" she snapped.

Fiyero stood up and walked over to the green Witch. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her close, and kissed her neck tenderly. "I'm staying whether you like it or not," he whispered. She could feel his hot breath against her neck as he kissed her again.

She sighed and shrunk into his hold. "This is why you shouldn't fall in love," she muttered offhandedly. "Love is wicked distraction. Love blinds you."

"Is this a confession?" Fiyero teased. "Is the terrible Wicked Witch of the West confessing that she is in love?"

"I guess so," she whispered as she leaned her head into the crook made by his shoulder and his neck.

"I love you too."

Her eyes slid shut. "I know," she said. "I know so very, very much."

"Please stay today. I'm worried about you."

"I have to go," she replied, pulling away from him. She took another swig of her bottle of whiskey and tied her hair into a tight bun, securing it with a few pins at the base of her neck.

"Be careful," he said. "Please."

She nodded. "And what do you plan to do today?" she asked. "It's daylight out now, if you leave this place you must be careful to not be seen."

"I know Fae, I'm not _that_ stupid."

She sighed. "I'm going now," she said. "And I don't know when I'll be back."

"I'll be here."

"Of course you will."

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked, sounding hurt.

Elphaba turned to face him; wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Nothing," she whispered. "Forget I said that, I didn't mean it. I'm glad you're here."

"So am I."

She looked at him, _really_ looked at him. "I was so terrified of you finding out," she whispered, her voice choked as if she was on the brink of tears. "I thought that, for sure, you would leave when you knew. I thought that… that it would disgust you so much that you wouldn't be able to stay."

"Fae… how could you think that?"

"This is just how I am Yero my hero. This is just how I think. I can't help it. Do you hate me for it?"

"I can't hate you for anything. It's impossible for anyone to do such a thing."

"No it's not," she said but stopped herself before anymore words could escape her mouth.

"What?" he prodded.

"It's nothing." She turned from him then and made her way to the door. "I need to go. Big things are afoot, I cannot be tardy."

Fiyero nodded and watched her as she wrapped her thick coat around her and slipped her gloves on. She placed her shawl over her head to help shield her green skin from the world as she opened the door and made her way down the small stairwell.

Fiyero waited. The Vinkus prince noticed the rain that began to fall and he worried for Elphaba but he knew he could do nothing to help her. So he found a bucket under the cooking counter and set it outside to collect the rain water. When it was full he brought it back inside and set to washing the Witch's small home. He scrubbed the floor, made the bed, did the dishes. He doubted that the place had ever truly been cleaned before as he knew Elphaba's aversion to water. It was filthy when he thought about it but he tried to avoid thinking about it too much.

It seemed that he spent most of his time with Elphaba trying to avoid thinking about the problems in her life too deeply. He wondered how healthy that was but thought little of it – being with Elphaba had made him think less of what occurred in his life, made him turn a blind eye to the pain like she did. He knew it was wrong but the way she was able to just toss everything away amazed him – even though he knew she was just repressing all her pain to have it explode outward at some other unconnected event in her life.

There was an explosion then. It shook Elphaba's small home and scared Fiyero half-to-death. He ran for the one window that was not boarded up and watched in horror as he could see, in the distant, fire. Blue flames – the flames of the resistance – burning nearly a whole street down. He was shocked into stillness and for hours he could do nothing but watch as the City itself seemed to burn to the ground. He feared for Elphaba's life and when she did not return that night he curled up under the thin blankets of her bed and tried to find comfort in the fact that the bedding smelled of her.

He couldn't.

He was startled awake – he didn't remember falling asleep – by the sound of the door slamming against the wall as it was forced open. He sat up, the sheets tangling around his body, and stared at the intruder. He was afraid for a moment as the shadows of the night hid the face of the person who had entered but after a few seconds he recognized her as his beloved Elphaba.

"Fae!" he exclaimed in relief as he made his way towards her but she brushed past him and he noticed, for the first time, that she was holding something.

"Get the blanket!" she snapped out. "Put it on the table!"

He complied instantly, too afraid to anger her, and when the only blanket was placed on the table Elphaba set down what she was holding. It was a cat, or a Cat, Fiyero couldn't tell. And the green Witch chewed her lip as she watched the bundle of fur breathing, shallowly, in unconsciousness.

"Are you bleeding?" Fiyero asked in concern, moving towards her.

Elphaba nodded but held her hand out to prevent Fiyero from coming any closer. "It's fine," she said. "It's just a small wound."

"What happened out there?"

"Enough questions, we need to help him!" She ran her hand through the matted fur of the old Cat she had brought back with her. "Where is Malky?" she asked.

Fiyero shrugged. "I haven't seen him for the last few days."

"Dear Oz I hope he didn't get tangled in this too," she muttered to herself. "Look, Syren's hurt, but I… I just don't know how to help him!"

"Is he wounded or just unconscious?"

"There's blood on his fur but I don't know if it's his. It could be anyone's… it could be mine for all I know!"

Fiyero stepped towards the injured Cat and ran his hands over the unconscious body. "I think his front right leg is broken," he stated. "And his belly is really swollen."

"Internal bleeding?" Elphaba choked out.

"Probably."

The Witch began to pace, wringing her hands together. "No," she muttered. "No… no… no!"

"Fae?"

"You don't understand!" Elphaba whirled around to face the Vinkus prince. "I try to do the right thing and it always ends in disaster! I… this… he was… just… no! No! No! No!"

Fiyero grabbed her wrist, pulled her close to him. He felt the blood soak his shirt from the injury to her side and her frowned in concern. "You're still bleeding," he said in worry.

"I'm fine," she muttered. "Where in the world is Malky? Of all the times that Cat's presences suffocates me he decides to disappear the day I need him the most!"

"Elphie, what you just said didn't really make much sense."

"You know what I mean!" she snapped at him as she pried his arms away from her waist so that she could get away from him. "Where is that damn Malky!"

"Look, we'll keep, what's his name – Syren? – as warm as we can. Does Malky know him? Is that why it's so important for Malky to be here?"

"No more questions!" she shrieked. "Just… just let me be!"

"What happened out there? Why was the City on fire?"

Elphaba fell silent for a few long minutes. "There was a… a hiccup in the plan. It didn't go as it was supposed to. And there were… oh, Fiyero!" She turned to face him then, and he could see the tears in her eyes. "So many people were screaming! And the fire was everywhere! And it wasn't supposed to be like that! I tried to save those that I could but it… my magick… I'm not that strong!"

"This is the price of the life you led."

"Don't patronize me!" she screamed. "Don't speak to me as if you know what I saw out there today!"

"I know what _I_ saw!" He pointed at the window to emphasize his words. "I saw blue flames engulfing more buildings than I cared to count! I saw blue fire killing – _murdering_ – innocent people! I saw the revolution committing murder!"

"It was an accident!"

"These are the people that you associate with on a daily basis!"

"Shut-up! Just shove it! Why are you trying to make this harder on me?"

"I'm trying to show you what your life is! I'm trying to show you the truth!"

"_You're_ trying to show _me_ the truth?" She laughed. "You cannot even comprehend the truth in your own life!"

"What in Oz's name are you talking about?"

"Oh, like the fact that your friend Avaric is still a rapist! That he took my body just like all the other men! You probably visited with him the day after! What do you say to that!"

Fiyero was shocked. "He… he _what_?"

"Are you surprised? Did you really think that he was actually regretful of what he did to me? Did you believe in what he told you? He raped me in that locked room just like all the other men! Then he had the nerve to apologize – apologize! – for raping me back at Shiz! That is the kind of people that _you_ associate with on a daily basis!"

"I… I didn't… I never… Elphie… Fae… if I had known… I thought that… I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you when I said I was friends with Avaric. I didn't know that –"

"That he used me like a whore!" she snapped at him. "Oh please Fiyero! Just shut-up!"

"I'm sorry Fae… please… really, I am."

"I have no doubt that you are," she muttered as she turned to watch Syren. "Where's Malky?"

"Why is this so important to you?"

"You won't understand."

"Fae… please…" He wrapped his arms around her but she hissed as he pulled at her wounds. He frowned. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It hurts now, more than before," she whispered.

"Can I see?"

"What about Syren?"

"He's unconscious Fae, and there's nothing we can do help him anyways. We can only wait until Malky returns before you can finish whatever you set out to do. In the meantime let me see to your injury, okay?"

She nodded and he took her hand, led her to her bed. She sat on the edge and Fiyero found his own seat beside her. She shrugged her coat off and he took it from her before gently undoing the clasps on the back of her tattered and blood-stained dress and pullimg the clothing down to her waist. He inhaled sharply as he saw the wound that cut into the left side of her body. It looked as if a large knife had been thrust into her and the whole of her abdomen and side was badly burnt. "What happened?" he asked quietly.

She did not reply. He sighed and looked around the room. "I have nothing for it," she said before he could ask.

"At least it's already clotting."

"Malky!" Elphaba exclaimed suddenly, startling Fiyero. The Vinkus prince followed the Witch's gaze to lay eyes on the white-haired Cat as he jumped in through the slightly ajar window. He didn't even notice Syren as his eyes went first the large wound and the blood that stood out in stark contrast against Elphaba's green skin.

"What happened?" Malky asked, not realizing that he was speaking for the first time while in Fiyero's presence.

Elphaba was standing in a moment and scooped Malky up in her arms. She held him against her chest for a few long minutes. "I thought you were lost," she whispered, keeping her eyes shut to hold her tears back. "I thought that you were one of the ones that got caught in the fire."

"I'm fine," Malky said as he looked up at the Witch's face, twisted in both guilt and relief. "But you are not. What happened to you?"

Elphaba did not reply. Instead she opened her eyes and slowly turned her head to look at the unconscious form of Syren on the table. Malky followed her gaze but he did not recognize the injured Cat.

"You don't know who he is, do you?" Elphaba asked. Malky shook his head. "He's your father," she continued. "And he's dying. I… I didn't know if you wanted to see him. I didn't know if _he_ wanted to see you. But I thought… that just maybe… something good could come out of this disaster of a day. Just maybe. "

"My… my father?" Malky stammered out. Elphaba nodded as she moved towards Syren and placed Malky on the table next to his unconscious father.

"He gave you over to my care, back when I was still at Shiz. You must remember that?"

Malky was shocked into silence. He nudged his father's head but Syren would not be woken. "Is he… is he going to be okay?"

Elphaba stammered over her words, seemed to choke on the very air around her. Fiyero saw the difficulty she was having and answered for her. "There's internal bleeding," he said quietly. "And there's not much we can do except keep him company."

"Was he –"

"Caught in the middle of it all?" Elphaba interrupted. "Yes. And… and that's why… and… oh, Malky! I'm _so_ sorry! I wish this could have all been different. I wish that… that you wouldn't have to see him like this… meet him like this. It's all like some twisted, cruel joke and I didn't intend it to be like that. I just thought that you would want to –"

"Thank you."

The Cat's words startled the Witch and Elphaba gasped in shock. "Pardon?" she breathed out.

"Fae…" Fiyero grabbed her wrist gently, led her towards the door. "Let them be, for just a moment."

She nodded and they left her small home, settling themselves against the other door at the bottom of the stairwell. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She didn't even notice that her dress was still half off, or that the wound on her side was still bleeding and burnt. "Do you think he'll wake?" Elphaba whispered.

Fiyero shrugged. "Who can say?"

"I hope he does… for Malky's sake."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. She looked at him in confusion. "This revolution," he clarified. "Look at what it is doing. This isn't saving the world, this is destroying what little peace is still left!"

She closed her eyes, leaned her head against his shoulder. "Please," she whispered; pleaded. "Don't do this… not now."

"If not now then when?"

"I don't mean to argue."

"You're running away, like always!"

Elphaba pulled away from Fiyero's hold and leveled an angry glare at him. "I am more committed to this then I have ever been to anything else in my life! I am doing the _exact_ _opposite_ of running away!"

"And how do you know that your – your cause! – is the right one? How do you know that you are doing what is right? You don't! You can't!"

She stood up, stumbled away from him and caught herself against the wall. "Can you honestly say that you look around this city and what you see doesn't disgust you?" she muttered. She was in shock.

"I've never cared to look!"

"And there lies the problem! You don't care!"

"And you care too much!"

"How can someone care too much?" she shrieked.

"Because it's killing you!" His voice was choked slightly. Was he crying? Elphaba couldn't tell due to the shadows that fell over them and the lack of light in the stairwell. "And… and I can't stand to watch you dying like this!"

"I'm not dying!"

"For Oz's sake Elphaba! Look at yourself! Your skin and bones! You're hurting and despairing and you cannot stand to even look at yourself! Can you? You're dying!"

"No I'm not!"

"You were jealous of that man – was his name Jay? – because he had the… the _strength_ to kill himself! That's what you told me! That's not healthy!"

"Shut-up!"

"You were raped and you blame yourself! That doesn't even make sense!"

"It was my fault!"

"The very nature of rape is the nature of absolving guilt! The act of rape itself takes the blame completely away from the victim!"

"I wasn't the one who called it rape!" She shoved him then, and he fell against the wall opposite her. "You gave it that name! I was a whore Fiyero! Nothing more! For Oz's sake the word is scarred on me!"

Fiyero's eyes drifted to her stomach then, where he knew the self-inflicted scar that she spoke of was, but he did not see it there. His mouth slackened in shock and he tried to speak but his voice failed him. He brought his gaze up to meet Elphaba's eyes and motioned with a small head-nod that she should look at herself for once. She did.

The word was gone.

A green hand came up to touch her stomach gently where she knew the words 'whore' and 'murderer' should be. She had gouged the words into her skin herself – she knew their exact place. Every little bump and line and ugly raise of skin of the scars. But the scarred green skin there was blackened slightly; and an ugly purplish-blue colour. It was blistered and bleeding but the words were gone.

Burnt away. The blue fire of the resistance had burnt her clothing and licked at her skin. It had blistered away the words that the Witch had labeled herself with so many years ago.

The fire had purified her.

She slid down the wall to sit on the dirty floor. Pressed her hand against her abdomen. She looked up at Fiyero with tear-filled eyes. "I… it… it isn't possible. I never… it… it can't be!" She was hysterical, frantic, and felt so terribly lost all of the sudden.

Fiyero sat down beside her but did not move to touch or hold her. He could sense that she needed some sense of separation at the moment – he knew that she would not allow herself to be touched in the state she was in. "It doesn't make any sense," she whispered but both her and Fiyero knew how the scarred words had seemingly disappeared from her skin. She knew but she couldn't comprehend; she couldn't wrap her mind around the truth. It was too strong, too bitter, and too frightening.

"It seems fate wanted to show you how wrong you were about yourself."

Fiyero's words caused Elphaba to look towards him. Their eyes locked and she just stared at him, her bottom lip trembling as she tried not to cry. "It's… gone," she said. He nodded.

She smiled. It was not her usual sarcastic smirk or her small shy-like smile that Fiyero had come to know and love. It was a real smile – a true smile – and it shocked them both. Fiyero brought his hand to cup her face. His thumb wiped away the one tear that was perched precariously at the corner of her eye and she just continued to stare at him.

"I love you," she whispered; barely audible. Fiyero was stunned. "I… I cannot bear to face the days without you anymore."

"Fae…"

"But I fear what has made me strong has only made you weak." She dropped her gaze to the floor and suddenly jerked away from Fiyero's hand – as if his touch had burnt her. "You're too attached to me. What if I should need to disappear again? What if the resistance should have need for me as a martyr? What then? Could you live without me?"

"No."

"Then I have killed you."

"I don't care." He reached for her hand, grasped it even though she tried to pull away. "If you need to disappear then I will disappear with you. If the resistance wants a martyr then I'll be one with you. If all of Oz chases you down and murders you simply because you are the Wicked Witch then I will die by your side."

"Your love is too strong. Your love for me will get you killed."

"I don't care Fae. Don't you see? I would do anything for you. If you asked I would do."

"What if I asked you to kill me?"

He inhaled sharply at that. "Elphie?" he questioned quietly.

"To free me from this… this pain," she said. "Would you? If I asked?"

"I… I couldn't kill you!" He was horrified that she would ask such a thing of him; that she would even _think_ to ask such a thing of him.

Her shoulders slumped. She seemed to give up, in a way. "Oh," was all she could say. He looked at her, watched her.

"You… you really hoped I would say yes, didn't you?"

She nodded; barely. "I could never… I'm not that strong. I'm too weak. Too scared. I hoped that you could… could… free me." Her voice was bitter, angry almost, but Fiyero wasn't sure if she was directing that anger towards him or towards herself.

"And you think nothing of the guilt that such an act would place on me, do you?"

"It would be no more guilt than what I live with."

"And look how you live!"

She looked at him then. And he saw the pain swirling in her eyes as her ever controlled mask began to crumble. The stress of the failed mission and the disaster it had caused combined with the morbid nature of their conversation had worn her down – had ate away at the iron walls she had built up around herself. He hugged her then, and she shrunk into his warm body; wishing to warm her own cold and bitter soul.

In the silence created by the lull in their conversation they heard the muffled voices from above. Syren had awaken, for a few minutes before death claimed his tortured soul, and the father and son that had been separated for so long were exchanging words that neither Fiyero nor Elphaba could decipher from where they sat. They were too far away to hear the words, they only heard the voices. But they waited, with baited breath, as they sat intertwined together, until the voices faded away – replaced by an eerie, heavy silence.

"He's dead," Elphaba whispered. Fiyero nodded and held the Witch tighter. The small, abandoned corn exchange seemed to grow colder at Syren's passing and Elphaba began to tremble in Fiyero's hold. "I feel sick," she said.

Fiyero ran his hand through her hair repeatedly. "It's going to be okay," he whispered.

"I wish it was me."

"Instead of Syren?" Fiyero asked. Elphaba nodded. "Your time hasn't come yet," he said. "You're not meant to die. Not now, not here, not in this place."

"I like this place."

Fiyero chuckled. "It's nice… in its own way."

"It's cozy."

"I imagine Glinda would have different words to say on the matter."

Elphaba fell silent then. "I miss her," she said quietly. "I miss them all. Oh, what I would give to go back to that time again! To be a teenager so full of youth and hope and naivety. To be ignorant of it all Fiyero – that's what I wish for."

"They say ignorance is bliss."

"It is."

"It also blinds you."

"But if you have been blind your whole life you don't know what you're missing. There's no pain there. You can't hurt for something you've never seen. You can't miss what you've never had."

"Yes you can."

"How?"

"You never had love throughout your entire childhood yet you still missed it."

"Nessie had it. I saw it… that's why I missed it."

"You knew."

"I knew."

Fiyero nodded. "Yes," he said; agreeing with her, "to be ignorant and naïve again. That would be… different."

"It would be nice."

"It would be easy."

"Is that so much to ask for? A life that's easy?"

"Is that what you want? Truly?"

Elphaba shrugged. "I don't know what I want," she muttered. "I've never known what I've wanted."

Their conversation was interrupted by a loud wail from the room upstairs. Elphaba stood up then, slowly to still her swimming vision and pounding head, and struggled up the stairs. Fiyero followed behind her incase she should stumble or fall. When she reached the door she entered to find Malky upon the table, his head buried in the fur of his father. She didn't ask – she didn't have to. All she did was pull a chair up to the table and sit down. Malky looked at her then, and she saw the grief in her eyes.

"I didn't mean for it to end like this," she whispered. She put her hand out and the Cat walked towards her. The Witch began to pet him, trying to comfort him, and knowing that nothing she could do would be able to lessen Malky's grief.


	27. Chapter Twenty Seven

_The Witch began to pet him, trying to comfort him, and knowing that nothing she could do would be able to lessen Malky's grief._

--

**Chapter Twenty-Seven:**

They buried Syren in the large community graveyard down the road from the Witch's home. Elphaba herself was not present for the burial as she had to keep herself hidden – she had been spotted at the disaster of a mission that had killed so many and the Wizard had already labeled her as the sole perpetrator of the whole terrible incident. It angered her, to be blamed so harshly, but she could do nothing about it. So she sat in her home and waited for their return.

But they took so long and the Witch could not handle it. She dug through her cabinet beneath the cooking counter and found her small cloth bag she kept for emergencies. A bag she dreaded, a bag she hated, but a bag that was so much a part of her that she could not let it go.

Fiyero and Malky returned to find the Wicked Witch of the West inebriated and beyond the ability to comprehend the world around her. She stumbled towards them, almost falling over her own feet, and Fiyero saw the white powder that she had not consumed on the table and the blood dripping from a green nose. He was terrified for her, and horrified that she had sunk so low again, but he knew that he could not help her if she did not want to be helped.

"Sorry," she muttered. She tripped then, and Fiyero caught her. "So sorry," she slurred out. He looked strange to her, taller than he should, and she went limp in his hold.

"Why?" he asked her. She looked up at him, opened her mouth to speak, but all that came from her was incomprehensibly gurgling sounds. She turned from him then and her body lurched slightly as it tried to expel the drugs from her system.

She reached for the chamber pot and vomited. Half-digested food, bile, and blood came from her mouth in waves. She kneeled on the floor and Fiyero held her hair back – remembering nights of his own in the Emerald City when he had gone out with friends, with Avaric, and drank too much. But this wasn't the same. This wasn't a night out with friends and this wasn't just alcohol. This was despair and grief and terrible pain all wrapped up in a neat little package and fed with drugs to grow stronger by the day.

This was Elphaba Thropp committing suicide.

It scared Fiyero and made his heart beat fast. She always told him that she did not have the strength to kill herself but what she did not know was that this… life… she led was no different than the knife that Jay had used to slash his throat. This life would be the death of her and the drugs and alcohol did not help. She had killed herself once, back at Shiz, if only for a minute or two, but he feared that she was on the same path. In fact, he doubted she had ever left that horrible path to begin with.

She clutched onto his shirt, buried her head into his chest. Her breaths came in ragged gasps as she tried to make sense of the world around her but it was far too hard… far too impossible. He held her close and rubbed comforting circles over her back. She fell asleep, or possibly unconscious – Fiyero could not tell – and he took her to her bed, laid her down. Her body trembled with cold and exhaustion and he laid himself down beside her, kept his arms wrapped around her protectively. Malky settled himself down at the base of the bed and watched them silently.

"Yero my hero," she muttered a few hours later; when she had come to her senses somewhat.

"Mh?" Fiyero replied sleepily. He didn't remember falling asleep and he couldn't recall when Elphaba had awoken.

She shrunk further into the comfort his body gave her. She kissed him and he blinked tiredly at her. "I want to run away," she said. "I want to disappear."

"It could be arranged."

She sighed. "It's too late for such a thing. I'm too involved in this all."

"You're too involved in the drugs."

"It's not all the time."

"That doesn't matter. You shouldn't be doing them at all. How can you stand it? How can you like yourself when you're on them?"

"I don't like myself to begin with so what does it matter?"

Fiyero fell silent; held her closer. "You're killing yourself and I don't think you realize that."

"I know exactly what I'm doing."

"So you mean for your life to be like this? You mean for your end to come by some overdose?"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes, let her go, and turned from her. He slid from the bed and stood up, moved to the table and sat down. "I can't do this," he muttered.

Elphaba sat up, clutching the thin blanket around her shivering frame, and watched him. "I told you this wasn't good for you."

"It's not that –"

"You're too in love with me. You can't stand the thought of living without me now and that's not good. You don't understand – I'm going to die. Whether by my work in the resistance or by my own hand, I _will_ die Fiyero, and you will grieve. You don't deserve that."

"Fae –"

"I'm just a mistress Fiyero. You have a wife and children back home. What more could I be? This is nice Fiyero, this is fun, but it has to come to an end soon. You will go home and I will continue on my way and we will probably never meet again."

"I'll be back next year."

"Who's to say I'll be here still? Or alive even? A year is a long time Fiyero… and my time is running out."

"Don't say that!"

"It's the truth. The revolution is wary of me. My publicity and my title of Wicked Witch do not help them. They mean to stay underground, to stay in the shadows, but I thrust their work into the light. They don't want that and I have a feeling that soon they will use me for my title and I will be killed by some angry Ozian mob."

"Elphaba!"

"Don't look so horrified Fiyero, it is the way my life should be. Don't you see that? I am a tool, an object, I always have been."

He shook his head slowly, sadly. "You're not an object Fae, you're not a tool. You're a person, and you deserve happiness."

She stood up and made her way towards him. "I have happiness," she said, "with you."

His heart melted at that and they became one body beneath her sheets. Malky sighed and endured the brunt of their thrashing legs to stay warm under the covers at the foot of her bed. When they were done Elphaba made some dinner, a small meal of vegetables and roots and they ate in silence at the table. He wore his pants only while the Witch had not even bothered to dress. Her burnt body was still blistered and her lovemaking had not helped to heal the wounds in any way.

"Does it still hurt?" Fiyero asked when they had finished eating. Elphaba looked up at him and nodded slightly.

"Burns take a while to heal," she said.

"The knife wound wasn't small by any means either."

She shrugged. "You're going to have to stay away for a few days," she said. He looked surprised. "The resistance. It will be dangerous for you to be here this time."

"But –"

"Please Fiyero." She looked at him with a pleading in her eyes that he could not be angry with. "Promise me that this time you will stay away."

He nodded. They fell into silence. The night began to tick away and they passed the time beneath the blankets, finding pleasure in the curves of each other's body. For the first time in her wretched life the Witch felt comfortable beneath a man's touch and Fiyero's hands were allowed to roam below her waist without her anger. He welcomed the change, found hope in it, and did not realize that it was Elphaba's last gift to him.

The next time she saw him he was dead.


	28. Epilogue

_**Author's Note: **The sequel is now posted. It's called "Breathe - Book II: Of the Journey Back". Visit my profile to find it. :) Hopefully you have enjoyed Book I of Breathe and let's hope Book II is just as enjoyable. (As a hint as to what is to come in Book II – it has more to do with the friendship between two certain witches_).

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_The next time she saw him he was dead._

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**Epilogue:**

The blood was everywhere. It coated the floor, the sheets, his clothes, her body. The pages of the Grimmerie were stained with it as she tried, desperately and uselessly, to find some spell to save him. But he was dead and no sorcery in all of Oz could save him.

Nothing could reverse death.

She pulled at her hair in frustration and it came out in matted clumps in her hands. She wailed in grief and desperation and screamed pitiful prayers to a God she didn't even believe in as she hoped with a hope she knew didn't exist in her life. She cried. Tears that burnt her face and landed on his torn and broken body as she hugged him to her chest. She ran her hands through his hair, rested her chin on the top of his head, and cradled his body close to her as if he was an infant who needed to be coddled.

Malky watched the heart wrenching scene from his place in the rafters. He wanted to cry with her but he had spilt his tears over his father's death and he had none left to shed. Elphaba, however, had too many. It was painful to watch her grieve and despair like she was as she kneeled on the floor and rocked the lifeless body of her lover.

Fiyero was dead and it was her fault. She knew it, could sense it in the air. He had been murdered by the Gale Force – murdered for his connection with her. She had put his life in danger and now he was dead. Dead because of her.

The grief and guilt choked her. It was so much worse than it had ever been. She had seen death before – even been the cause of it before – and it had always hurt but not like this. This was so much worse. It was unbearable. She wanted to rip her heart right out of her body and toss it away. She wanted to cut out her soul and leave it behind. She wanted to be empty and weightless and forget about it all.

But she couldn't. The bitter truth was right in front of her, was cradled in her arms. Fiyero's death tore the last shred of sanity from her. She screamed and wailed and cried. She shook him and slapped him and hit him. She pulled at her hair and chewed on her lip and clawed at her skin. Her nails drew blood on her arms and stomach and she held him close to her. His body was going cold and it terrified her as the truth was slammed into her mind over and over again. She buried her head in his hair and took in the intoxicating smell of him – trying to cement it in her mind.

She felt dead inside.

He was gone and she had killed him. She couldn't take it. She couldn't handle it. She picked him up, torn body and blood-stained skin, and set him on her bed. She kissed him – long and fierce – and pulled the sheets over to cover his broken body.

"I'm going," she said to Malky; her voice choked and weak. "And I'm not coming back. Don't follow me. Don't try to find me."

The Cat watched her. "The revolution will hunt you down."

"I hope they do," she said, and he knew she wanted them to kill her for leaving. He knew she wanted to die now, more than ever.

She grabbed the Grimmerie and the enchanted, half-useless broom and fled. She tripped as she made her way down the stairwell but she did not care. She detangled herself at the bottom and exited the abandoned corn exchanged – left her home and her lover and the only sense of comfort and security she had ever managed to attain.

The night was dark, the moon lost behind the clouded sky, and the streets were mostly empty. The Witch walked, not caring that if anyone were to look at her they would see her green skin clearly and recognize her instantly. She did not care that she was covered in blood and that her hair was half-gone and her scalp bleeding in parts from where she had ripped her hair right out of her head. She stumbled down the streets in a dazed confusion brought upon by her broken heart.

Love can make even the coldest, even the strongest, weak and blubbering and lost. She clutched the Grimmerie to her chest and the broom floated beside her. It seemed to have a mind of its own and followed her of its own accord. She didn't mind – in truth she could not find the strength within herself to care. It was too late now… too late to make a difference anymore. She had dared to hope, dared to heal, dared to love, and she had been scarred by it. She had been hurt and pained and killed simply because she had dared to _feel_.

She walked for hours, until the sun began to rise, and she found it odd that no one seemed to recognize her. She began to wonder that if perhaps she had created some sort of sorceress wall around herself to shield her from prying eyes. She walked passed many people who did not even cry out at her when usually they would have had her captured by now. It was strange but she did not dwell on it. She didn't want to think – it hurt too much to think – so she just let it be.

There was a mauntary then, and she stared at it for quite a while. She realized that the sun had set again. Had she been walking for that long already? She wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure that the sun had risen to begin with. It was all a fog to her and she couldn't concentrate enough to understand.

She pulled at the string by the door, rang the bell. The broom fell with an audible thud against the porch and the Witch looked at it bleakly for a moment before kneeling down to pick it up. It was then, when she was crouched against the porch floor as she wrapped her hand around the worn broom handle, that the door opened. She raised her eyes to stare at the novice maunt standing before in the doorway.

The novice took her hand, led her inside. The world began to blur, began to haze up. Colours turned into shades of gray – nothing was quite black nor white… just, gray. She saw water and, for a moment, she felt fear and shrunk away from the offending liquid. The novice, not wanting to start a disagreement, settled for wiping the blood off of the Witch's wrists with a dry cloth to check for a sad suicide attempt. Nothing. She noticed the green skin but seemed, for some odd reason, to not recognize that she was cleaning blood off of the very Wicked Witch of the West that had drove all of Oz into bitter terror more than once.

She settled the Witch in a chair in a room full of the aging women and maunts of the convent. Time dredged on and the Witch seemed to drift off into a strange half-sleep driven by her overwhelming grief. She was not quite unconscious but she was not awake either. She was just… there.

The last thing she remembered was the very vague feeling of… _something_… in her abdomen, in her body – growing; and it scared her.

_**The End**_


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